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ifamous QJtaomen* 



MARIA EDGEWORTH. 



The next volumes in the Famous Women Series 
will be: 

Sarah and Angelina Grimke. By Mrs. 

Birney. 
Anne Bradstreet. By Helen Campbell. 

Already published : 

George Eliot. By Miss Blind. 
Emily Bronte. By Miss Robinson. 
George Sand. By Miss Thomas. 
Mary Lamb. By Mrs. Gilchrist. 
Margaret Fuller. By Julia Ward Howe. 
Maria Edgeworth. By Miss Zimmern. 




\ V V C\ 



V 



MARIA EDGEWORTH. 



BY 



HELEN ZIMMERN. 



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BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1883. 









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Copyright, 1883y 
By Roberts Brothers. 



University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



Though many notices of Miss Edgeworth have 
appeared from time to time, nothing approaching 
to a Life of her has been published in this 
country. As I have had the good fortune to 
have access to an unpublished memoir of her, 
written by her stepmother, as well as to a 
large number of her private letters, I am ena- 
bled to place what I hope is at least an authen- 
tic biography before the reader. Besides much 
kindness received from the members of Miss 
Edgeworth's family, I have also to acknowledge 
my obligations for help afforded in the prepara- 
tion of this little book to Mrs. George Ticknor 
and Miss Ticknor of Boston, U. S. A., Mrs. Le 
Breton, Sir Henry Holland, Bart., the Rev. 
Canon Holland, the Rev. Dr. Sadler and Mr. 
F. Y. Edgeworth. 

H. Z. 

London, August, 1883. 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Introductory . . . .... 9 

CHAPTER IL 
Early Years 17 

CHAPTER HI. 
Girlhood 28 

CHAPTER IV. 
Womanhood 42 

CHAPTER V. 
"Practical Education" — Children's Books 52 

CHAPTER VI. 
Irish and Moral Tales 73 

CHAPTER VII. 
In France and at Home 88 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Fashionable and Popular Tales , . .116 



Vill CONTENTS, 

CHAPTER IX. 
Visit to London — Mr. Edgeworth's Death 144 

CHAPTER X. 
Later Novels — General Estimate . . 161 

CHAPTER XL 
Visits Abroad and at Home . . . 193 

CHAPTER XIL 
Mr. Edgeworth's Memoirs Published — 1821 

TO 1825 214 

CHAPTER XHL 

1826 TO 1834 237 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Last Years ....... 269 



MARIA EDGEWORTH. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 



Too many memoirs begin with tradition ; to 
trace a subject ab ovo seems to have a fatal 
attraction for the human mind. It is not need- 
ful to retrace so far in speaking of Miss Edge- 
worth ; but, for a right understanding of her 
life and social position, it is necessary to say 
some words about her ancestry. Of her family 
and descent she might well be proud, if ances- 
try alone, apart fromx the question whether 
those ancestors of themselves merit the admira- 
tion of their descendants, be a legitimate source 
of pride. The Edgeworths, originally estab- 
lished, it is believed, at Edgeworth, now Edge- 
ware, in Middlesex, would appear to have 
settled in Ireland in the sixteenth century. 
The earliest of whom we have historical record 
is Roger Edgeworth, a monk, who followed in 
the footsteps of his sovereign, Henry VIII., 



10 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

both by being a defender of the faith and by 
succumbing to the bright eyes of beauty, for 
whose sake he finally renounced Catholicism 
and married. His sons, Edward and Francis, 
went to Ireland. The elder brother, Edward, 
became Bishop of Down and Cbnnor, and died 
without issue. It was the younger, Francis, 
who founded the house of Edgeworth of Edge- 
worthstown ; and ever since Edgeworthstown, 
in the county of Longford, Ireland, has remained 
in the possession of the family whence it derived 
its name. The Edgeworths soon became one of 
the most powerful families in the district, and 
experienced their full share of the perils and 
vicissitudes of the stormy period that appar- 
ently ended with the victories of William III. 
Most members of the family seem to have been 
gay and extravagant, living in alternate afflu- 
ence and distress, and several of Maria Edge- 
worth's characters of Irish squires are derived 
from her ancestors. The family continued Pro- 
testant — the famous Abbe Edgeworth was a 
convert — and Maria Edgeworth' s great-grand- 
father was so zealous in the reformed cause as 
to earn for himself the sobriquet of '^ Protestant 
Frank." His son married a Welsh lady, who 
became the mother of Richard Lovell Edge- 
worth, a man who will always be remembered 
as the father of his daughter. He was, how- 



RICH A RD LO VELL EDGE WORTH. 1 1 

ever, something more than this ; and as the 
lives of the father and daughter were through- 
out so intimately interwoven, a brief account 
of his career is needful for a comprehension 
of hers. 

Richard Lovell Edgeworth was born at Bath 
in 1 744, and spent his early years partly in 
England, partly in Ireland, receiving a careful 
education. In his youth he was known as ^'a 
gay philosopher," in the days when the word 
philosopher was still used in its true sense of a 
lover of wisdom. Light-hearted and gay, good- 
humored and self-complacent ; possessed of an 
active and cultivated mind, just and fearless, 
but troubled with neither loftiness nor depth of 
feeling, Richard Lovell Edgeworth was never- 
theless a remarkable personage, when the time 
at which he lived. is taken into account. He 
foresaw much of the progress our own century 
has made, clearly indicated some of its features, 
and actually achieved for agriculture and indus- 
try a multitude of inventions, modest as far as 
the glory of the world attaches to them, but 
none the less useful for the services they ren- 
der. Many of his ideas, rejected as visionary 
and impracticable when he first promulgated 
them, have now become the common property 
of mankind. He was no mere theorist ; when 
he had established a theory he loved to put it 



<0fiisti<«^amis^'m^ 



12 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

into practice, and as his theories ranged' over 
many and wide fields, so did his experiments. 
Even in late life, when most persons care only 
to cultivate repose, he threw himself, with all 
the ardor of youth, into schemes of improve- 
ment for the good of Ireland ; for he was sin- 
cerely devoted to her true welfare, and held in 
contempt the mock patriotism that looks only 
to popularity. In early life he sowed a certain 
quantity of wild oats, the result of the super- 
abundant animal spirits that distinguished him, 
and at the age of sixteen contracted a mock- 
marriage, which his father found needful to 
have annulled by a process of law. After this 
escapade he was entered at Corpus Christi, 
Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. During 
his residence he became intimate with the 
family of Mr. Elers, a gentleman of German 
descent, who resided at Black Bourton, and 
was father to several pretty girls. Mr. Elers 
had previously warned the elder Edgeworth 
against introducing into his home circle the 
gay and gallant Richard, remarking that he 
could give his daughters no fortunes that would 
make them suitable matches for this young 
gentleman. Mr. Edgeworth, however, turned a 
deaf ear to the warning, and the result was that 
the collegian became so intimate at the house, 
and in time so entangled by the court he had 



RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH, 1 3 

paid to one of the daughters, that, although he 
had meanwhile seen women he liked better, he 
could not honorably extricate himself. In later 
life he playfully said : ^'Nothing but a lady ever 
did turn me aside from my duty." He certainly 
was all his days peculiarly susceptible to female 
charms, and, had opportunity been afforded 
him, might have rivalled Henry VHI. in the 
number of his wives. This second marriage 
gave as little satisfaction to his father as the 
first, but the elder Edgeworth wisely recog- 
nized the fact that he was himself not wholly 
blameless in the matter. He, therefore, a few 
months after the ceremony had been performed 
at Gretna Green, gave his consent to a formal 
re-marriage by license. Thus, before he was 
twenty, Richard Lovell Edgeworth was a hus- 
band and a father. The marriage entered upon 
so hastily proved unfortunate ; the pair were 
totally unsuited to one another ; and though 
Mrs. Edgeworth appears to have been a worthy 
woman, to judge from the few and somewhat 
ungenerous allusions her husband makes to her 
in his biography, they did not sympathize intel- 
lectually — a point he might have discovered 
before marriage. The consequence was that 
he sought sympathy and pleasure elsewhere. 
He divided his time between Ireland, London 
and Lichfield. The latter city was the centre 



14 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

of a somewhat prim, self-conscious, exclusive 
literary coterie, in which Dr. Darwin, the singer 
of the Botanic Garden^ Miss Anna Seward, the 
"Swan of Lichfield,'' and the eccentric wife- 
trainer, Thomas Day, the author of Sanford 
and Merton, were conspicuous figures. They 
were most of them still in their youthful hey- 
day, unknown to fame, and, as yet, scarcely 
aspiring towards it. Here, in this, to him, con- 
genial circle of eager and ardent young spirits, 
Richard Lovell Edgeworth loved to disport him- 
self ; now finding a sympathetic observer of his 
mechanical inventions in Mr. Watt, Dr. Darwin 
or Mr. Wedgwood ; now flirting with the fair 
Anna. He must have posed as a bachelor, for 
he relates how, on one occasion, when paying 
compliments to Miss Seward, Mrs, Darwin took 
the opportunity of drinking "Mrs. Edgeworth's 
health," a name that caused manifest surprise 
to the object of his affections. Here, too, he 
became imbued with the educational theories 
of Rousseau, which clung to him, in a modified 
degree, throughout his life, and according to 
which, in their most pronounced form, he edu- 
cated his eldest son. Here, further, at the age 
of twenty-six, he met the woman he was to love 
most deeply. From the moment he saw Miss 
Honora Sneyd, Mr. Edgeworth became enam- 
ored, and in his attentions to her he does not 



RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH, 1 5 

seem to have borne in mind the fact that he 
was a married man. 

^'I am not a man of prejudices," he com- 
placently wrote in later life ; " I have had four 
wives.* The second and third were sisters, 
and I was in love with the second in the life- 
time of the first.'* 

The man who could make this public state- 
ment, and who could, moreover, leave to his 
daughter the task of publishing the record of 
his ill-assorted union with the woman who was 
her mother, was certainly one in whom good 
taste and good feeling were not preeminent. 
The birth of this daughter, who was destined 
to be his companion and friend, is an event he 
does not even note in his memoirs, which are 
more occupied with his affection for Miss 
Sneyd, from whose fascinations he at last felt 
it would be prudent to break away. He left 
England for a lengthened stay in France, 
taking with him his son, whose Rousseau 
education was to be continued, and accom- 
panied by Mr. Day, who, to please Miss 
Elizabeth Sneyd, was about to put himself 
through a course of dancing and deportment, 
with a view to winning her consent to a 
marriage if he could succeed in taming his 

* It was his habit, and that of his family, to drop all men- 
tion of the earlier marriage. 



1 6 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

savage limbs and ideas into proper social 
decorum. The death of his wife recalled Mr. 
Edgeworth to England. With all possible 
speed he hastened to Lichfield, proposed to 
Honora Sneyd, was accepted, and married her 
within four months of his wife's demise. Mr. 
Edgeworth, the elder, had died some time 
previously; the son was now, therefore, master 
of Edgeworthstown. Immediately after his 
marriage he set out for Ireland, taking with 
him his bride and four little children. From 
that date forward a new era in his life com- 
menced. It was not to run any longer in a 
separate course from that of his family. 



CHAPTER II. 



EARLY YEARS. 



Maria Edgeworth was born January ist, 1767, 
in the house of her grandfather, Mr. Elers. 
Thus this distinguished authoress was an Eng- 
lishwoman by birth, though Irish and German 
by race. At Black Bourton her earliest years 
were spent. Her father, who had taken in 
hand his little son to train according to the 
principles enunciated in E^nile, took little notice 
of her, leaving her to thq care of a fond, soft- 
hearted mother and doting aunts. The result 
was that the vivacity of her early wit was 
encouraged and the sallies of her quick temper 
unrepressed. Of her mother she retained little 
remembrance beyond her death, and how she 
was taken into the room to receive her last kiss. 
Mrs. Edgeworth had died in London at the 
house of some aunts in Great Russell street, 
and there Maria remained until her father's 
second marriage. Of her new mother Maria 
at first felt great awe, which soon gave place to 
sincere regard and admiration. Her father had 



l8 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

been to her from babyhood the embodiment of 
perfection, and the mere fact that he required 
love from her for his new wife was sufficient to 
insure it. But she also learnt to love her for 
her own sake, and, indeed, if the statement of 
so partial a witness as Mr. Edgeworth can be 
accepted, she must have been a woman of 
uncommon power and charm. 

Of her first visit to Ireland Maria recollected 
little except that she was a mischievous child. 
One day, when no one heeded her, she amused 
herself with cutting out the squares in a checked 
sofa-cover. Another day she trampled through 
a number of hot-bed frames that had just been 
glazed and laid on the grass. She could recall 
her delight at the crashing of the glass; but 
most immorally, and in direct opposition to her 
later doctrines, did not remember either cutting 
her feet or being punished for this freak. It 
was probably her exuberant spirits, added to the 
fact that Mrs. Honora Edgeworth's health 
began to fail after her removal to the damp cli- 
mate of Ireland, that caused Maria to be sent 
to school. In 1775 she was placed at Derby 
with a Mrs. Latffiere, of whom she always spoke 
with gratitude and affection. Though eight 
years old, she would seem to have known very 
little, for she was wont to record that on the 
first day of her entrance into the school she 



EARLY YEARS, 19 

felt more admiration at a child younger than 
herself repeating the nine parts of speech, than 
she ever felt afterwards for any effort of human 
genius. The first letter extant from her pen is 
dated thence, and though of no intrinsic merit, 
but rather the ordinary formal letter of a child 
under such circumstances, it deserves quotation 

because it is the first. 

Derby, March 30, 1776. 
Dear Mamma: 

It is with the greatest pleasure I write to you, as I 
flatter myself it will make, you happy to hear from me. 
I hope you and my dear papa are well. School now 
seems agreeable to me. I have begun French and danc- 
ing, and intend to make [''great" was written, but a line 
was drawn through it] improvement in everything I learn. 
I know that it will give you great satisfaction to hear 
that I am a good girl. My cousin Clay sends her love to 
you ; mine to father and sisters, who I hope are well. 
Pray give my duty to papa, and accept the same from, 
dear mamma, Your Dutiful Daughter. 

It was at Derby that Maria learnt to write the 
clear, neat hand that never altered to the end 
of her life ; and here too she acquired her profi- 
ciency in embroidery, an art she also practiced 
with success. As her parents shortly after came 
to reside in England for the benefit of Mrs. 
Edgeworth's health, Maria spent her holidays 
with them. Her stepmother appears to have 
taken great pains with her, conversing with her 
as an equal in every respect but age. 



20 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Her father had already commenced with her 
his system of educating the powers of the young 
mind by analytical reflection. He soon saw that 
hers was of no ordinary capacity. In 1780 he 
writes to her : — 

It would be very agreeable to me, my dear Maria, to 
have letters from you familiarly : I wish to know 
what you like and what you dislike ; I wish to communi- 
cate to you what little knowledge I have acquired, that you 
may have a tincture of every species of literature, and 
form your taste by choice and not by chance. Adieu ! 
enjoy the pleasure of increasing the love and esteem of 
your excellent mother and of your 

Affectionate Father. 

Your poor mother continues extremely ill. 

Less than a month afterwards Mr. Edgeworth 
had to announce the death of his wife. The 
letter in which he does so throws light on the re- 
lationship of father, daughter and stepmother : — 

My dear Daughter : 

At six o'clock on Thursday morning your excellent 
mother expired in my arms. She now lies dead beside 
me, and I know I am doing what would give her pleasure 
if she were capable of feehng anything, by writing to you 
at this time to fix her excellent image in your mind. 

As you grow older and become acquainted with more 
of my friends, you will hear from every mouth the most 
exalted character of your incomparable mother. You 
will be convinced, by your own reflections upon her con- 
duct, that she fulfilled the part of a mother towards you 



EARLY YEARS. 21 

and towards your sisters, without partiality for her own 
or servile" indulgence towards mine. Her heart, con- 
scious of rectitude, was above the fear of raising suspi- 
cions to her disadvantage in the mind of your father 
or in the minds of other relatives. And though her timely 
restraint of you, and that steadiness of behavior, yielding 
fondness towards you only by the exact measure of your 
conduct, at first alarmed those who did not know her, yet 
now, my dearest daughter, every person who has the least 
connection with my family is anxious to give sincere tes- 
timony to their admiration of those very circumstances 
which they had too hastily, and from a common and well- 
grounded opinion, associated with the idea of a second 
wife. 

Continue, my dear daughter, the desire which you feel 
of becoming amiable, prudent and of use. The orna- 
mental parts of a character with such an understanding 
as yours necessarily ensue ; but true judgment and sagac- 
ity in the choice of friends, and the regulation of your 
behavior, can be had only from reflection and from being 
thoroughly convinced of what experience teaches, in 
general too late, that to be happy we must be good. 

God bless you and make you ambitious of that valuable 
praise which the amiable character of your dear mother 
forces from the virtuous and the wise. My writing to 
you in my present situation will, my dearest daughter, be 
remembered by you as the strongest proof of the love of 

Your Approving and Affectionate Father. 

This letter, written at such a time, conveyed 
the impression intended, and thenceforward, 
even more than previously, the will to act up to 
the high opinion her father had formed of her 



22 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

character constituted the key-note of Maria 
Edgeworth's life, the exciting and controlling 
power. 

At school as well as at home Maria distin- 
guished herself as an entertaining story-teller. 
She soon learnt, with all the tact of an hnpro- 
visatrice, to know which tale was most success- 
ful. Many of these were taken from books, 
but most were original. While entertaining 
her companions Maria studied their characters. 
It was at school she developed her keen pene- 
tration into the motives that sway actions. 
Here also she saw numbers, though on a small 
scale, and could estimate the effect of the voice 
on the multitude and the ease with which a 
mass can be governed. Very early indeed her 
father encouraged her to put her imaginings on 
paper; a remarkable proof of his enhghtenment, 
for those were the days when female authorship 
was held in slight esteem, when for a woman to 
use her pen was regarded as a dangerous step- 
ping beyond her boundary, which exposed her to 
suspicion and aversion. Soon after Mrs. Hon- 
ora Edgeworth's death Mr. Edgeworth wrote : — 

I also beg that you will send me a tale, about the 
length of a Spectator , upon the subject of generosity. 
It must be taken from history or romance, and must be 
sent the day se'nnight after you receive this, and I beg 
you will take some pains about it. 



EARLY YEARS. 23 

The same subject was given to a lad at 
Oxford, and Mr. Sneyd was chosen as umpire. 
He pronounced Maria's far the best. "An 
excellent story," he said, "and extremely well 
written, but where is the generosity V — a 
saying which became a household proverb. 
This first story is not preserved, but Miss 
Edgeworth used to say that there was in it a 
sentence of inextricable confusion between a 
saddle, a man and his horse. 

The same year Maria was removed from her 
unpretentious school to a fashionable establish- 
ment in London. Here she was to learn 
deportment and the showy accomplishments 
that in those days constituted the chief branches 
of a young lady's education. She was duly tor- 
tured on blackboards, pinioned in iron collars, 
made to use dumb-bells, and some rather strin- 
gent measures were taken to draw out her 
muscles and increase her stature. In vain ; by 
nature she was a small woman, and small she 
remained. She also learnt to dance with grace 
in the days when dancing was something more 
dignified than a tearing romp, but music she 
failed in utterly. She had no taste for this 
art, and her music master, with a wisdom 
unhappily too rare, advised her to abandon the 
attempt to learn. She had been so well 
grounded in French and Italian, that when she 



/O. 



24 MARIA EDGEWORTIL 

came to do the exercises set her, she found 
them so easy that she wrote out at once those 
intended for the whole quarter, keeping them 
strung together in her desk, and unstringing 
them as required. The spare time thus secured 
was employed in reading for her own pleasure. 
Her favorite seat during play-time was under 
a cabinet which stood in the school-room, and 
here she often remained so absorbed in her 
book as to be deaf to all uproar. This early 
habit of concentrated attention was to stand 
her in good stead through life. 

While his daughter was thus acquiring cul- 
ture, Mr. Edgeworth was once more engaged 
in courtship. Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, recog- 
nizing her husband's nature, had recommended 
him on her death-bed to marry her. sister 
Elizabeth, whose proposed marriage to Mr. Day 
had long ago fallen through. Though neither 
Elizabeth nor Mr. Edgeworth thought them- 
selves suited to one another, Honora's advice 
prevailed, and within eight months after his 
last wife's death Mr. Edgeworth was once more 
married. It does not appear what Maria, now 
old enough to judge, thought of this new 
marriage, contracted so precipitately after the 
loss of one to whom Mr. Edgeworth was so 
devoted; but she doubtless held it right, as 
she ■ held all done by her father, and she be- 



EARLY YEARS, 2$ 

came to her new mother a warm and helpful 
friend. 

Soon after this marriage Maria's eyes grew 
inflamed, and a leading physician pronounced 
in her hearing that she would infallibly lose 
her sight. The physical and mental sufferings 
hereby induced were keen, but they were 
borne with fortitude and patience. The sum- 
mer holidays were spent as she had spent some 
previous ones — at Mr. Day's. This eccentric 
person had at last found a wife to his mind, 
and was settled in Surrey. The contrast 
between the mental atmosphere of her school, 
where externals were chiefly considered, and 
that at Mr. Day's, where these were scorned, 
did not fail to exercise an influence. She was 
deeply attached to her host, whose lofty mind 
and romantic character she honored. His 
metaphysical inquiries carried her into another 
world. Forbidden to use her eyes too much, 
she learnt in conversation with him. The icy 
strength of his system came at the right 
moment for annealing her principles, his severe 
reasoning and uncompromising love of truth 
awakened her powers, and the questions he put 
to her, the necessity of perfect accuracy in her 
answers, suited the bent of her mind. Though 
such strictness was not always agreeable, she 
even then perceived its advantages, and in 



->/ 



26 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

after-life was deeply grateful to Mr. Day. The 
direction he gave her studies influenced her, as 
his friendship had in earlier days influenced 
her father. Mr. Day further plied her with 
tar-water, then deemed a sovereign remedy for 
all complaints. Either owing to this or the 
change of air, her eyes certainly grew better 
and her general health improved, although she 
remained delicate, subject to headaches, and 
unequal to much bodily exertion. 

The following year (1782) her father resolved 
to return to Ireland to reside. He had seen 
on his brief visits the mischievous results of 
absenteeism, and felt that if it were in the 
power of any man to serve the country which 
gave him bread, he ought to sacrifice every 
inferior consideration and reside where he 
could be most useful. As, however, Mrs. 
Honora Edgeworth's health could not be pro- 
nounced an '* inferior consideration," Mr. Edge- 
worth had been forced to live in England. 
Now, though his new wife had even before 
marriage shown consumptive symptoms, her 
constitution had so much strengthened that it 
seemed possible to inhabit the family house. 
Mr. Edgeworth therefore returned to Ireland 
with a firm determination to dedicate the 
remainder of his life to the education of his 
children, the improvement of his estate, and 



EARLY YEARS. 2/ 

the endeavor to contribute to the amelioration 
of its inhabitants. He took Maria with him, 
and there now began for her the tranquil 
current of existence that was diversified by no 
remarkable events outside the domain of friend- 
ship and kindred. The home she now entered, 
the social and domestic duties she now under- 
took, continued the same for life. Her return 
to Ireland marks an epoch in her history. 



CHAPTER III. 

GIRLHOOD. 

Ireland is not among those countries that 
arouse in the hearts of strangers a desire to 
pitch their tents, and to judge from the readi- 
ness with which her own children leave her, we 
cannot suppose that they find her a fascinating 
land. And little wonder, when we consider the 
state of ferment and disorder which, in a greater 
or less degree, has always prevailed there. Yet 
Miss Edgeworth says : — 

Things and persons are so much improved in Ireland 
of latter days, that only those who can remember how 
they were some thirty or forty years ago can conceive 
the variety of domestic grievances which, in those times, 
assailed the master of a family immediately upon his 
arrival at his Irish home. Wherever he turned his eyes, 
in or out of his house, damp, dilapidation, waste 
appeared. Painting, glazing, roofing, fencing, furnish- 
ing, all were wanting. The back yard, and even the 
front lawn round the windows of the house, were filled 
with loungers, " followers " and petitioners ; tenants, 
under-tenants, drivers, sub-agent and agent, were to have 
audience ; and they all had grievances and secret inform- 
ations, accusations, reciprocating and quarrels each 



GIRLHOOD, 29 

under each interminably. Alternately as landlord and 
magistrate, the proprietor of an estate had to listen to 
perpetual complaints, petty wranglings and equivocations, 
in which no human sagacity could discover the truth or 
award justice. 

Returning to the country at the age of six- 
teen,* Maria Edge worth looked at everything 
with fresh eyes. She was much struck with 
the difference between England and Ireland ; 
the tones and looks, the melancholy and gaiety 
of the people, were new and extraordinary to 
her. A deep impression was made upon her 
observant mind, and she laid the foundations 
for those acute delineations of Irish character 
with which she afterwards delighted the world. 
It was her good fortune and ours that at an age 
when the mind is most impressionable she 
came into these novel scenes in lieu of having 
lived in their midst from childhood, when it is 
unlikely that she would so well have seized 
their salient traits. 

It was June when the family arrived at Edge- 
worthstown, and though nominally summer, 

* Miss Edgeworth, in her father's Life, states that she was 
but twelve years old when she returned to Ireland. The date 
she gives, however, and that afterwards given by her step- 
mother, show that she must have been sixteen when the 
removal took place. It can, therefoie, have been a mere lap- 
sus calami on her part, as this eminently sensible woman was 
incapabje of the silly weakness of concealing her age. 



30 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

there was snow on the roses Maria ran out to 
gather. She felt as if transported into a novel 
and curious world. Unfortunately neither the 
situation nor the house of Edgeworthstown 
were beautiful ; there was nothing here to 
arouse romance in the girl's nature. The 
country of Longford is in general flat, consist- 
ing of large districts of bog ; only on the north- 
ern boundaries are there some remarkably sterile 
mountains. The house was an old-fashioned 
mansion, built with no pretensions to beauty. 
It needed much alteration and enlargement to 
suit the requirements of a growing family, and 
to accommodate his seven children suitably, 
Mr. Edgeworth saw himself forced to build. 
His extreme good sense guarded him from the 
usual errors committed by the Irish squires of 
that period, who were either content to live in 
wretched houses, out of repair, or to commence 
building on a scale as though they had the 
mines of Peru at their command, and then 
abandoning their plans as though they had not 
sixpence. The house at Edgeworthstown, with- 
out ever having pretensions to architecture, was 
simply made habitable. From the very com- 
mencement they began the even tenor of life 
that was to distinguish the family. The father 
was the centre of this remarkably united house- 
hold. Miss Edgeworth says: — 



GIRLHOOD, 31 

Some men live with their family without letting them 
know their affairs ; and, however great may be their 
affection and esteem for their wives and children, think 
that they have nothing to do with business. This was 
not my father's way of thinking. Whatever business he 
had to do was done in the midst of his family, usually 
in the common sitting-room, so that we were intimately 
acquainted, not only with his general principles of con- 
duct, but with the most minute details of their every-day 
application. I further enjoyed some peculiar advantages : 
he kindly wished to give me habits of business ; and 
for this purpose allowed me, during many years, to assist 
him in copying his letters of business, and in receiving 
his rents. 

Indeed, from their arrival the eldest daughter 
was employed as her father's agent, for it was 
Mr. Edgeworth's conviction that to remedy 
some of the worst evils of his unhappy coun- 
try, it was needful to get rid of the middle-men. 
On his own estate he was resolved not to let 
everything go wrong for the good old Irish 
reason that it had always been so. He labored 
with zeal, justice, forbearance. He received 
his rents direct, he chose his tenants for their 
character, he resisted sub-division of holdings, 
and showed no favor to creed or nationality. 
Miss Edgeworth proved herself his worthy 
daughter. She exhibited acuteness and pa- 
tience in dealing with the tenants, admiring 
their talents while seeing their faults ; gener- 
ous, she was not to be duped; and just, she 



32 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

was not severe. Thus in a brief time, thanks 
to this firm but kindly government, their estate 
came to be one of the best managed in the 
county. The work it induced was certainly 
fortunate for Maria ; besides teaching her habits 
of business, it made her familiar with the modes ' 
of thought and expression of the Irish. She 
learnt to know them thoroughly and truly at 
their best and at their worst. 

But Maria's entire time was not occupied 
with the tenantry. It was a part of her 
father's system that young children should not 
be left to servants, from whom he deemed, not 
without justice, that they learnt much that was 
undesirable. He therefore committed to the 
charge of each of his elder girls one of their 
younger brothers and sisters, and little Henry, 
Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth's child, fell to 
Maria's lot. She devoted herself with ardor 
to the boy, and was fondly attached to him. 
But it was, of course, the father who superin- 
tended the general education, following the 
lines afterwards laid down in Practical Educa- 
tion. His system certainly succeeded with his 
numerous children, though it might, as a rule, 
incline to make the pupils somewhat presump- 
tuous, self-sufficient and pragmatical. The ani- 
mation spread through the house by connecting 
the children with all that was going on was 



GIRLHOOD. 33 

highly useful ; it awakened and excited mental 
exertion, and braced the young people to exer- 
cise independence of thought. Mr. Edgeworth 
made no empty boast when he wrote to Mr. 
Darwin : — 

'^ I do not think one tear per month is shed 
in this house, nor the voice of reproof heard, 
nor the hand of restraint felt.'* 

How primitive was the state of Ireland in 
those days can be gathered from the fact that, 
except bread and meat, all articles of food and 
household requirement were to be had only in 
Dublin, and not always even there. Neither 
was there much congenial society. The Edge- 
worths had no liking for the country gentlemen 
who spent their lives in shooting, hunting and 
carousing, — booby squires who did not even 
know that their position put duties upon them. 
Formal dinners and long sittings, with the 
smallest of small talk, were the order of the 
day and night. They were, however, fortunate 
in finding in this social wilderness some few 
persons really worth knowing, chief among 
whom were the families resident at Pakenham 
Hall and Castle Forbes. The former house, 
the residence of Lord Longford, was only 
twelve miles distant, but it was separated from 
Edgeworthstown by a vast bog, a bad road, an 
awkward ferry and an ugly country. Never- 

2 



34 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

theless, these obstacles were braved, and at 
Pakenham Hall Maria met many people of 
literary and political distinction. At Castle 
Forbes, some nine miles distant, by a more 
practicable road, there was also to be met 
society varied and agreeable, more especially 
so when Lady Granard's mother, Lady Moira, 
was in the country. Lady Moira was a woman 
of noble character, much conversational talent 
and general knowledge. As daughter to the 
Countess of Huntingdon she had seen much 
strange society, and had been in the very midst 
of the evangelical revival. Besides this she 
was a person of great influence in Ireland. 
Her house in Dublin was the resort of the wise 
and witty of the day, hence she was able to 
initiate Maria into a new and larger world, to 
expand her ideas, and to increase her insight 
into character. It was indeed fortunate for 
Miss Edgeworth that this old lady took a special 
fancy to her. She was in those days very 
reserved in manner and little inclined to con- 
verse — a contrast to after years, when her 
conversation delighted all listeners. It was, 
perhaps, partly weak health that made her 
silent, but probably yet more the consciousness 
of great powers which were under-rated or 
misunderstood by her youthful contemporaries. 
She had no frivolous small society talk to offer 



GIRLHOOD. 35 

them. Lady Moira, however, recognized the 
capacity of this timid, plain, inoffensive young 
girl. She talked to her, drew her out, plied 
her with anecdotes of her own experiences in 
life, and gave her the benefit of her riper 
wisdom. 

Thus Miss Edgeworth early lived with and 
learnt to understand the fashionable society of 
which she wrote so much. It is always for- 
tunate for a novelist to be born, as she was, 
amid the advantages of refinement and breed- 
ing, without being elevated out of reach of the 
interests and pleasures which dwell in the 
middle ranks. For want of this, many, even 
amongst the most eminent writers of fiction, 
have suffered shipwreck. 

While thus reserved in society, Maria relaxed 
with her father. She knew he appreciated her 
powers, and his approbation was sufficient at 
all times to satisfy her. One of her pleasures 
was to ride out with him — not that she was a 
good horsewoman, for she was constitutionally 
timid, but because it afforded her the oppor- 
tunity of uninterrupted exchange of talk. It 
was on these rides that most of their writings 
were planned. 

In the autumn of their return to Ireland 
(1782) Miss Edgeworth began, at her father's 
suggestion, to translate Madame de Genlis' 



36 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

AdHe et Theodore, It was her first work 
intended for publication. The appearance of 
Holcroft's translation prevented its execution, 
but neither she nor her father regarded the 
time bestowed on it as misspent; it gave her 
that readiness and choice of words which 
translation teaches. • Mr. Day, who had a 
horror of female authorship, remonstrated with 
Mr. Edgeworth for having ever allowed his 
daughter to translate, and when he heard that 
the publication was prevented, wrote a con- 
gratulatory letter on the event. It was from 
the recollection of the arguments he used, and 
from her father's replies, that five years after- 
wards Miss Edgeworth wrote her Letters to 
Literary Ladies, though they were not pub- 
lished till after the death of Mr. Day. Indeed, 
it is possible that had he lived Maria Edge- 
worth would have remained unknown to fame, 
so great was her father's deference to his 
judgment, though sensible that there was much 
prejudice mixed with his reasons. '^Yet,'' adds 
Miss Edgeworth, "though publication was out 
of our thoughts, as subjects occurred, many 
essays and tales were written for private 
amusement." 

The first stories she wrote were some of 
those now in the Parents Assistant and Early 
Lessons, She wrote them on a slate, read them 



GIRLHOOD, 37 

out to her sisters and brothers, and, if they 
approved, copied them. Thus they were at 
once put to the test of childish criticism ; and 
it is this, and hving all her life among children, 
that has made Miss Edgeworth's children's 
stories so inimitable. She understood children, 
knew them, sympathized with them. Her 
father's large and ever-increasing family, in 
which there were children of all ages, gave her 
a wide and varied audience of youthful critics, 
among the severest in the world. Many of 
her longer tales and novels were also written 
or planned during these years. Her father 
had, however, imbued her with the Horatian 
maxim, novumque prematur in annum^ so that 
many things lay by for years to be considered 
by her and her father, recorrected, revised, with 
the result that nothing was ever given to the 
world but the best she could produce. 

Thus, contented, busy, useful, the even course 
of her girlhood flowed on and merged into early 
womanhood, with no more exciting breaks than 
the arrival of a box of new books from London, 
an occasional visit to her neighbors, or, best of 
all, to Black Castle, a few hours' drive from 
Edgeworthstown, where lived her father's favor- 
ite sister, Mrs. Ruxton, her aunt and life-long 
friend. For forty-two years aunt and niece 
carried on an uninterrupted correspondence. 



38 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

while their meetings were sources of never- 
failing delight. 

In 1789 the sudden death of Mr. Day 
deprived Mr. Edgeworth of a valued friend. 
This man, who, for a person not actually insane, 
was certainly one of the oddest that ever 
walked this earth, with his mixture of mauvaise 
honte and savage pride, misanthropy and phil- 
anthropy, had exercised a great influence on 
both their lives. They felt his loss keenly. 
Another sorrow quickly followed. Honora, 
the only daughter of Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, 
a girl of fifteen, endowed with beauty and 
talents, fell a victim to the family disease. 
The next year Lovell, the now only surviving 
child of Honora, also showed signs of con- 
sumption. It became needful to remove him 
from Ireland, and Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth 
therefore crossed to England, leaving Maria in 
charge of the other children. A house was 
taken at Clifton, and here Miss Edgeworth and 
her charges rejoined their parents. The con- 
veying so large a party so long a journey in 
those days was no small undertaking for a 
young woman of twenty-four. The responsi- 
bility was terrible to her, though she after- 
wards dwelt only on the comic side. At one 
of the inns where they slept, the landlady's 
patience was so much tried by the number of 



GIRLHOOD, 39 

little people getting out of the carriage and 
the quantity of luggage, that she exclaimed : 
"Haven't you brought the kitchen grate too?" 
At Clifton the Edgeworths resided for two 
years. Miss Edgeworth writes to her Uncle 
Ruxton : — 

We live just the same kind of life that we used to do 
at Edgeworth stown, and though we move amongst num- 
bers, are not moved by them, but feel independent of 
them for our daily amusement. All the phantasmas I 
had conjured up to frighten myself vanished after I had 
been here a week, for I found that they were but phan- 
toms of my imagination, as you very truly told me. We 
live very near the Downs, where we have almost every 
day charming walks, and all the children go bounding 
about over hill and dale along with us. 

In a later letter she says that they are not 
quite as happy here as at home, but have a 
great choice of books which they enjoy. While 
at Clifton the eldest son visited them. His 
Rousseau education had turned him out an 
ungovernable child of nature ; he neither could 
nor would learn, so there remained no alterna- 
tive but to allow him to follow his inclinations, 
which happily led him towards nothing more 
mischievous than a sailor's life. At Clifton, 
too, they became acquainted with Dr. Beddoes, 
who soon after married Maria's sister Anna, 
and became the father of Thomas Lovell Bed- 



40 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

does, the poet of Death. A baby child also 
died within those two years, which thus em- 
braced meetings, partings, courtships, much 
pleasant social intercourse, and much serious 
study. For Maria it also included a visit to 
an old school-fellow in London : — 

She was exceeding kind to me, and I spent most of 
my time with her as I liked. I say most, because a good 
deal of it was spent in company, where I heard of noth- 
ing but chariots and horses, and curricles and tandems. 
Oh, to what contempt I exposed myself in a luckless 
hour, by asking what a tandem was ! Since I have been 
away from home I have missed the society and fondness 
of my father, mother and sisters, more than I can 
express, and more than beforehand I could have thought 
possible ; I long to see them all again. Even when I 
am most amused I feel a void, and now I understand 
what an aching void is perfectly well. 

A letter written from Clifton is a charming 
specimen of Miss Edgeworth's easy, warm- 
hearted family missives, which, like most 
family letters, contain little of intrinsic value, 
and yet throw much light upon the nature of 
their writer : — 

CLiiFTON, Dec. 13, 1792. 
The day of retribution is at hand, my dear aunt. The 
month of May will soon come, and then when we meet 
face to face, and voucher to voucher, it shall be truly 
seen whose letter-writing account stands fullest and 
fairest in the world. Till then " we'll leave it all to your 



GIRLHOOD, 41 

honor's honor." But why does my dear aunt write, " I 
can have but little more time to spend with my brother 
in my life," as if she was an old woman of one hundred 
and ninety-nine and upwards ? I remember the day I 
left Black Castle you told me, if you recollect, that "you 
had one foot in the grave ; " and though I saw you 
standing before me in perfect health, sound wind and 
limb, I had the weakness to feel frightened, and never 
to think of examining where your feet really were. But 
in the month of May we hope to find them safe in your 
shoes, and I hope that the sun will then shine out, and 
that all the black clouds in the political horizon will be 
dispersed, and that " freemen " will, by that time, eat 
their puddings and hold their tongues. Anna and I 
stayed one week with Mrs. Powys, at Bath, and were 
very thoroughly occupied all the time with seeing and — 
I won't say with being seen; for though we were at 
three balls, I do not believe any one saw us. The upper 
rooms we thought very splendid and the play-houses 
pretty, but not so good as the theatre at Bristol. We 
walked all over Bath with my father, and liked it 
extremely : he showed us the house where he was born. 

The day of retribution was indeed nearer at 
hand than she anticipated. In the autumn of 
1793 the news of Irish disturbances grew so 
alarming that Mr. Edgeworth thought it his 
duty to return immediately. The caravan was 
therefore once more transported to Edgeworths- 
town. 



CHAPTER IV. 



WOMANHOOD. 



On their return the Edgeworths at first inclined 
to think that the English papers had exagger- 
ated the Irish disturbances. Accustomed to a 
condition of permanent discontent, they were 
relieved to find that though there were alarms 
of outrages committed by "Hearts of Oak Boys" 
and "Defenders," though there were nightly 
marauders about Edgeworthstown, though Mr. 
Edgeworth had been threatened with assassina- 
tion, still, all things considered, "things in their 
neighborhood were tolerably quiet." In this 
matter as in others, of course, the basis of com- 
parison alone constitutes the value of the infer- 
ence deduced. In any case the family resumed 
their quiet course of existence ; Mr. Edgeworth 
busy with the invention of a telegraph, Miss 
Edgeworth writing, helping to educate the little 
ones, visiting and being visited by her Aunt 
Ruxton. In the evenings the family gathered 
round the fireside and the father read aloud. 
Late in 1793 Miss Edgeworth writes : — 



WOMANHOOD, 43 

This evening my father has been reading out Gay's 
Trivia^ to our great entertainment. I wished very much, 
my dear aunt, that you and Sophy had been sitting round 
the fire with us. If you have Trivia^ and if you have 
time, will you humor your niece so far as to look at it.^* 
I had much rather make a bargain with any one I loved 
to read the same book with them at the same hour, than 
to look at the moon like Rousseau's famous lovers. " Ah ! 
that is because my dear niece has no taste and no eyes." 
But I assure you I am learning the use of my eyes main 
fast, and make no doubt, please Heaven I live to be sixty, 
to see as well as my neighbors. I am scratching away 
very hard at the Freeman Family, * 

That Miss Edgeworth was not affected by 
the current sentimentalism of the period, the 
above remark shows. Indeed, her earliest let- 
ters evince her practical, straightforward com- 
mon sense. Romance had no place in her 
nature. In 1794 she was engaged upon her 
Letters to Literary Ladies, She wrote to her 
cousin : — 

Thank my aunt and thank yourself for kind inquiries 
after Letters to Literary Ladies. I am sorry to say they 
are not as well as can be expected, nor are they likely to 
mend at present; when they are fit to be seen — if that 
happy time ever arrives — their first visit shall be to 
Black Castle. They are now disfigured by all manner of 
crooked marks of papa's critical indignation, besides 
various abusive marginal notes, which I would not have 
you see for half-a-crown sterling, nor my aunt for a whole 
crown as pure as King Hiero's. 

* Afterwards changed into Patronage, 



44 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

The arts of peace, as she herself expresses 
it, were going on prosperously side by side 
with those of war ; the disturbances, of which 
Miss Edgeworth continues to write quite lightly, 
having become sufficiently serious to require 
military intervention. 

In 1795 the Letters to Literary Ladies v^^x^ 
published. Considering the time when the 
work was written it showed much independ- 
ence and advance of thought, though to-day it 
would be stigmatized as somewhat retrograde. 
It is nothing more than a plea in favor of 
female education, repeating arguments that of 
late years have been well worn, and of which 
the world, for some time past convinced of the 
wisdom of according education to women, no 
longer stands in need. The book is interesting 
to-day merely as another proof of how much 
Mr. Edgeworth and his daughter were advanced 
in thought. They could not be brought to the 
common opinion then prevalent that ignorance 
was a woman's safeguard, that taste for litera- 
ture was calculated to lead to ill conduct, though 
even a thinker so enlightened in many respects 
as Mr. Day indorsed Sir Anthony Absolute's 
dictum that the extent of a woman's erudition 
should consist in her knowing her letters, with- 
out their mischievous combinations. 

Not even the honors of first authorship could 



WOMANHOOD. 45 

cause Miss Edgeworth's private letters, then 
any more than afterwards, to be occupied with 
herself. ''I beg, dear Sophy," she writes to 
her cousin, '^that you will not call my little 
stories by the sublime title of ^ my works ; ' I 
shall else be ashamed when the little mouse 
comes forth/' It is the affairs of others, the 
things that it will please or amuse her corre- 
spondents to hear, that she writes about. The 
tone is always good-humored and kindly. 

Ever and again the noiseless tenor of her 
way was disturbed by the insurgents. She 
writes, January, 1796: — 

You, my dear aunt, who were so brave when the county 
of Meath was the seat of war, must know that we emulate 
your courage ; and I assure you, in your own words, 
" that whilst our terrified neighbors see nightly visions 
of massacres, we sleep with our doors and windows 
unbarred." I must observe, though, that it is only those 
doors and windows that have neither bolts nor bars that 
we leave unbarred, and these are more at present than 
we wish even for the reputation of our valor. All that I 
crave for my own part is that if I am to tave my throat 
cut, it may not be by a man with his face blackened with 
charcoal. I shall look at every person that comes here 
very closely, to see if there be any marks of charcoal 
upon their visages. Old wrinkled offenders, I should 
suppose, would never be able to wash out their stains, 
but in others a very clean face will, in my mind, be a 
strong symptom of guilt — clean hands proof positive, 
and clean nails ought to hang a man. 



46 MARIA EDGEIVORTH. 

In 1796 appeared the first volume of the 
Parent's Assistant. It is agreeable to learn 
from a letter of hers that she was not respon- 
sible for this clumsy title : — 

My father had sent the Parenfs Friend, but Mr. John- 
son has degraded it into Parenfs Assistant, which I 
dishke particularly from association with an old book of 
arithmetic called the Tutor^s Assistant. 

The book was so successful that the pub- 
lisher expressed a wish for more volumes, to be 
brought out with illustrations. Miss Beaufort, 
the daughter of a neighboring clergyman, was 
entrusted with the artistic commission, which 
led to an intimacy between the families. 
Meanwhile Miss Edgeworth, stimulated by 
success, continued to write new stories, and 
to correct and revise old ones. The Moral 
Tales were conceived at this time, and the idea 
of writing on Irish Bulls had occurred to her. 
She was also busy upon Practical Education. 
At the same time Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth's 
health, that had long been precarious, gave 
way, and in November, 1797, to the sorrow of 
all the circle, she fell a victim to consumption. 
As before, Mr. Edgeworth was soon consoled. 
It was in the direction of Miss Beaufort that 
he turned his eyes. There must certainly have 
been something attractive in this man, now 



WOMANHOOD. 47 

past fifty, three times a widower, with a numer^ 
ous family by different wives, that could induce 
a young girl to regard him as a wooer. Miss 
Edgeworth frankly owns that when she first 
knew of this attachment she did not wish for 
the marriage. But her father, with his per- 
suasive tongue, overcame her objections. 

Mr. Edgeworth himself announced his intend- 
ing nuptials to Dr. Darwin, at the end of a long 
letter dealing with the upas tree, frogs, agri- 
culture, hot-water pipes, and so forth : — 

And now for my piece of news, which I have kept for 
the last : I am going to be married to a young lady of 
small fortune and large accomplishments — compared 
With my age, much youth (not quite 30) and more pru- 
dence — some beauty, more sense — uncommon talents, 
more uncommon temper — liked by my family, loved by 
me. If I can say all this three years hence, shall not I 
have been a fortunate, not to say a wise man ? 

He was able to say so not only three years 
after, but to the end of his life. Whatever may 
be thought of Mr. Edgeworth's many and hasty 
marriages, it must be admitted that they all 
turned out to the happiness of himself and his 
children. Miss Edgeworth wrote a long letter 
to her future stepmother, characteristic both of 
her amiable disposition, her filial piety and her 
method of regarding love. " Miss Edgeworth's 
Cupid," as Byron observed, ''was always some- 



48 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

thing of a Presbyterian." In it she assures 
Miss Beaufort (who was her junior) that she 
will find her ^^ gratefully exact en belle fille ;'^ 
a promise she fulfilled beyond the letter. 

Within seven months of his late wife's death, 
just as public affairs were assuming a still 
stormier aspect, and the nation about to burst 
into the rebellion of 1798, Mr. Edgeworth was 
once more a bridegroom. The wedding trip of 
the couple took them through the disturbed 
districts ; they beheld rebels hidden in the 
potato furrows, and passed a car between whose 
shafts the owner had been hanged — a victim 
to the "Defenders." But in the house of 
Edgeworthstown there was, as ever, peace and 
concord ; and the trying situation upon which 
the new wife was called to enter was smoothed 
for her even by the children of the woman 
whom she had so quickly displaced in their 
father's affection. 

In an incredibly short time all things and 
people found themselves in their proper places, 
and the new Mrs. Edgeworth soon proved 
herself a fitting person to hold the reins of 
household government. Only a month after 
the marriage Miss Edgeworth can tell her 
cousin : — 

We are indeed happy. The more I see of my friend 
and mother, the more I love and esteem her, and the 



WOMANHOOD, 49 

more I feel the truth of all that I have heard you say in 
her praise. So little change has been made in the way 
of living, that you would feel as if you were going on 
with your usual occupations and conversation amongst 
us. We laugh and talk and enjoy the good of every 
day, which is more than sufficient. How long this may 
last we cannot tell. I am going on in the old way, 
writing stories. I cannot be a captain of dragoons, and 
sitting with my hands before me would not make any of 
us one degree safer. I have finished a volume of wee- 
wee stories about the size of the Purple Jar ^ all about 
Rosamond. My father has made our little rooms so 
nice for us ; they are all fresh painted and papered. Oh, 
rebels ! oh, French ! spare them. We have never injured 
you, and all we wish is to see everybody as happy as 
ourselves. 

The summer passed with immunity from 
open insurrection in County Longford ; but it 
shortly appeared that the people were secretly 
leagued with the rest of their countrymen, and 
only waited the arrival of the French to break 
into rebellion. Soon the whole district about 
Edgeworthstown was disturbed, and in Septem- 
ber it was needful for the family to beat a 
precipitate retreat from home, leaving it in the 
hands of the rebels. Happily it was spared 
from pillage, thanks to one of the invaders, to 
whom Mr. Edgeworth had once shown kind- 
ness. The family were only away five days. 
A battle had speedily settled the rebels and 
dispersed the French, whom their own allies 



50 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

had deserted at the first volley. But those 
days, although only five days, seemed a life- 
time to Miss Edgeworth, from the dangers and 
anxieties the family underwent in their course. 

By November all disturbances had so far 
subsided around Edgeworthstown as to allow 
the family to busy themselves with private 
theatricals. Miss Edgeworth writing the play, 
the children acting it, the father building the 
stage. At the end of the year Mr. Edgeworth 
was returned for the last Irish Parliament, and 
the family went with him to Dublin. The 
Union was then the hot theme of debate, the 
Irish having incontestably shown themselves 
incapable of home rule. Mr. Edgeworth very 
characteristically spoke for the Union and 
voted against it, declaring *^that England has 
not any right to do Ireland good against her 
will." 

In the spring of 1799 Mr., Mrs. and Miss 
Edgeworth went to England and renewed their 
acquaintance with Mr. Watt, Dr. Darwin and 
Mr. William Strutt of Derby. They also came 
into contact with many literary celebrities, 
Mr. Edgeworth now posing as an author upon 
the strength of Practical Education, written in 
partnership with his daughter, who was ever 
not only willing but anxious that he should 
bear off all the honor and glory. Among their 



WOMANHOOD. 5 1 

acquaintance was Mrs. Barbauld, for whom 
both father and daughter conceived a genuine 
regard, and whom Mr. Edgeworth Hked the 
more because she was a proof of the soundness 
of his belief that the cultivation of literary tastes 
does not necessarily unfit a woman for her do- 
mestic duties. In London they also visited their 
publisher, Mr. Johnson, an intelligent, gener- 
ous, but most dilatory man, who was then 
confined in King's Bench Prison on account of 
some publication held treasonable. Of this 
English visit there are, unfortunately, only two 
letters preserved : one announcing the birth of 
another baby into this already huge family, the 
other treating of "a young man, Mr. Davy,* 
who has applied himself much to chemistry, 
has made some discoveries of importance, and 
enthusiastically expects wonders will be per- 
formed by the use of certain gases.'* 

With the dissolution of the last Irish Parlia- 
ment, Mr. Edgeworth's public duties came to 
an end, and the quiet, happy life at Edgeworths- 
town recommenced its even course, marked only 
by the publication of Miss Edgeworth's works, 
and by births and deaths in the family circle. 

* Afterwards Sir Humphrey Davy. 



CHAPTER V. 

"practical education." — children's books. 

Two circumstances must never be lost sight of 
in speaking of Miss Edgeworth's writings : the 
one, that she did not write from the inner 
prompting of genius, but rather because it had 
been suggested by her father ; the other, that 
she wrote throughout with a purpose in view, 
and .by no means only for the sake of affording 
amusement. To blame her, therefore, as has 
been so often done, for being utilitarian in her 
aim, is to blame her for having attained her 
goal. A minor consideration, but one that 
often proves of no minor weight, was the fact 
that Miss Edgeworth never needed to follow 
authorship as a profession ; its pecuniary results 
were of no moment to her, and hence she was 
spared all the bitterness and incidental anxie- 
ties of an author's life, the working when the 
brain should rest, the imperative need to go on, 
no matter whether there be aught to say or not. 
Her path, in this respect, as in all others, trav- 
ersed the high-roads of life. Fame at once 



''PRACTICAL education:' S3 

succeeded effort ; the heart-sickness of hope 
deferred was never hers ; she was therefore 
neither soured nor embittered by f eehng within 
herself powers which the world was unwilling 
or slow to acknowledge. 

It was in 1798 that were published two large 
octavo volumes, called Practical Education^ 
bearing upon the title-page the joint names of 
Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth. This 
was the first partnership work of father and 
daughter, that literary partnership ** which for 
so many years,'' says Miss Edgeworth, "was 
the joy and pride of my life." The book was 
the outcome of a series of observations and 
facts relative to children, not originally 
intended for publication, registered first* by 
Mr. Edgeworth and his wife Honora, and after- 
wards continued by Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth. 
In consequence of Mr. Edgeworth's exhorta- 
tions. Miss Edgeworth also began in 1791 to 
note down anecdotes of the children around 
her, and to write out some of her father's con- 
versation lessons. The reason for giving all 
this to the world was that though assertions 
and theories on education abounded, facts and 
experiments were wanting. Undaunted by the 
fear of ridicule or the imputation of egotism, 
Mr. Edgeworth bade his daughter work the raw 
materials into shape, blending with anecdotes 



54 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

and lessons the principles of education that 
were peculiarly his. For this work Miss Edge- 
worth claims for her father the merit of having 
been the first to recommend, both by practice 
and precept, what Bacon called the experi- 
mental method in education. Mr. Edgeworth, 
as we know, was a disciple of the crude, 
mechanical school of Rousseau; and though, 
owing to his failure with his eldest son, he had 
seen the necessity of some modification, he had 
never wholly abandoned it, and had imbued his 
daughter with the same ideas. Happily for 
her, however, her earliest training had been 
less rigid than that of her brothers and sisters. 
She thus obtained elbow-ropm for that develop- 
ment which her father's formal and overloading 
system might have crushed. But of this she 
was unconscious, and she was ready to echo his 
opinions, believe in them blindly and propagate 

them. 

The book, though fprolix\ dull and prosy in 
part, containing much repetition, many paltry 
illustrations, many passages, such as the chap- 
ter on servants, that might be omitted with 
advantage, was, as a whole, of value, and would 
not even now be quite out of date. But its 
chief and abiding merit is that it was a step in 
the right direction ; and its worth must on that 
account be emphasized, although this was exag- 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS, 55 

gerated by Miss Edgeworth's filial fondness. 
There were in those days no text-books for the 
first principles of knowledge for the young ; and 
though education had been a favorite theme 
with all the philosophers, from Aristotle to 
Locke, their systems were too remote for prac- 
tical application. The inevitable but lamenta- 
ble consequence was, that theories of education 
were disregarded just by those very persons 
who had the training of the young in their 
hands. They were pleased to sneer at them as 
metaphysics. So much space was given in 
works of this nature to speculation, so little to 
practical application of proved and admitted 
truths, that the mere word metaphysics sounded 
to the majority of readers as a name denoting 
something perplexing and profound, but useless 
as a whole. Yet, as Miss Edgeworth perti- 
nently observed in her preface to Harry and 
Lucj/y after being too much the fashion, meta- 
physics had been thrown aside too disdainfully, 
and their use and abuse confounded. Without 
an attentive examination of the operations of 
the mind, especially as developed at an early 
age, every attempt at systematic education is 
mere working at random. The great merit of 
Mr. and Miss Edgeworth's works may be stated 
in her own words : — 

Surely it would be doing good service to bring into 
popular form all that metaphysicians have discovered 



56 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

which can be applied to practice in education. This 
was early and long my father's object. The art of 
teaching to invent — I dare not say, but of awakening 
and assisting the inventive power by daily exercise and 
excitement, and by the application of philosophic prin- 
ciples to trivial occurrences, — he believed might be 
pursued with infinite advantage to the rising generation. 

The authors of Practical Education did not 
seek to appeal to grave and learned persons, 
like the former writers on these themes, but to 
the bulk of mankind, in whose hands, after all, 
lies their application. In this series of some- 
what rambling essays, of the most miscella- 
neous description, there are no abstruse or 
learned disquisitions, there is nothing like a 
process of reasoning from beginning to end ; 
it is essentially a treatise for the mass. On 
every page there are remarks for which pre- 
vious authorities can be found ; original ideas 
are rare ; nevertheless the whole is expressed 
so lucidly and familiarly, the entire work is so 
crowded with illustrations of the simplest and 
most obvious kind, that *^the unwary reader 
can easily be entrapped into the belief that he 
is perusing nothing more serious than a lively 
and agreeable essay upon the tempers and 
capacities of children, written by two good- 
natured persons who are fond of amusing 
themselves with young people." Mr. Edge- 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS, 5/ 

worth believed according to the proverb, "that 
youth and white paper can take all impres- 
sions/' that everything could be achieved by 
education ; that, given the individual, it was 
possible to make of him whatever the in- 
structor pleased. Of course our present more 
scientific mode of thought, our superior scien- 
tific knowledge, shows us the untenability of 
so dogmatic a persuasion \ but it was charac- 
teristic of the eighteenth century, forms the 
key-note to many of their educational exper- 
iments, and furnishes the reason of their 
failures. The times when Mr. Edgeworth 
wrote and devised his doctrines were " the 
good old days when George the Third was 
King,'' when education was at a discount, when 
to have a taste for literature was to be held a 
pedant or a prig. If Mr. Edgeworth went too 
far in his earnest advocacy of careful training 
for the young of both sexes, in his belief in 
the result, our modern school has perhaps, in 
the latter respect, erred on the other side. 
We know now that it is out of the power of 
education to change nature. Yet our scientific 
knowledge has inclined us, perhaps unduly, to 
under-rate the value of training, and to allow 
too much play to the doctrine of laissez-faire. 
As ever, the truth lies in the middle ; and in 
any case, because we are at present going 



58 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

through a period of reaction, we should refrain 
from sneering at those perhaps over-earnest 
men, of whom Mr. Edgeworth was a type, who, 
in a frivolous age, rebelled against their un- 
thinking contemporaries. It is too much the 
fashion to stigmatize these men as prigs; 
pragmatic no doubt they were, conceited and 
self-confident, and, like all minorities, over- 
ardent. Still it cannot be enough borne in mind 
that the people of that period who thought, 
thought more and read more thoroughly than 
those of to-day. They came to original conclu- 
sions ; they did not imbibe so much at second- 
hand by means of criticism and ready-made 
opinions. Of this. Miss Edgeworth and her 
father were notable examples ; to this, her 
letters bear abundant testimony. 

In the preface to Practical Education the 
respective shares of father and daughter in the 
work are stated. He wrote all relating to the 
art of teaching in the chapter on tasks, gram- 
mar, classical literature, geography, chronology, 
arithmetic and mechanics ; the rest, consider- 
ably more than half, was by her. 

^^The firm of Edgeworth & Co.," as Sydney 
Smith named them, had now attained literary 
notoriety. Their book, on its appearance, was 
praised and abused enough to render its authors 
speedily famous. Mr. Edgeworth, with his enor- 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 59 

mous family, had, of course, had good oppor- 
tunities of observation and experiment in the 
domain of education. It was conceded that 
there was much that was wise and useful in his 
pages, mixed with much that was absurd and 
dogmatic. But the real life and animation for 
his tenets was to come from his daughter, who 
was to carry them further than they would 
undoubtedly otherwise have gone, and the fact 
that quite two generations of English men and 
women were instilled into Edgeworthian doc- 
trines is due entirely and alone to her. She 
made it the business of her life to illustrate 
the pedantic maxims of her father, and it has 
been ably remarked that between these narrow 
banks her genius flowed through many and 
diverse volumes ,of amusing tales. It was with 
this aim in view that The Parent's Assistant^ 
Harry and Lucy, Frank and Rosamond, and 
Early Lessons, those companions of the nursery, 
were penned. Though not all published at 
this time — the continuation of Harry and Lucy 
not, indeed, until many years later — it is con- 
venient to treat of them all together, as they are 
one in unity of thought and design. 

Fully to estimate what Miss Edgeworth did 
for the children of her time, and that immedi- 
ately succeeding it, it is needful to point out 
the wide contrast between those days and ours. 



6o MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

To-day the best authors do not think it beneath 
their dignity to write for children — quite 
otherwise ; while formerly few persons of any 
literary ability condescended to write children's 
books. In those days, therefore, nursery li- 
braries were not, as now, richly stocked, and 
children either did not read at all, or, if they 
were of a reading disposition, read the works 
intended for their elders, often, it must be 
admitted, with the good result that a solid 
foundation of knowledge of the English classics 
was laid. Still it was only exceptional chil- 
dren who attempted these tougher tasks ; most 
either did not read at all or read such poor 
literature as was at hand. In a series of able 
articles published some years ago. Miss Yonge 
has traced the history of children's books. 
For a long time there were no such things; 
then came some tales translated from the 
French and judiciously trimmed, besides a few 
original stories of more or less merit, to which 
latter category belonged Goody Two-Shoes. 
This was followed by the reign of didactic 
works which began with Mrs. Trimmer, whose 
original impulse came from Rousseau. It was 
his Efnile that had aroused the school which 
produced Madame de Genlis in France, Campe 
in Germany, and in England the Aikens, 
Hannah More^ the Taylors of Norwich, and 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS, 6 1 

Mr. Day. It was a famine that had to be met, 
and much stodgy food was devoured, many 
long, hard words were laboriously spelt out, the 
pabulum offered was but too often dull and 
dreary. Realism had invaded the nursery, 
strong, high purpose was the first aim in view, 
and entertainment was held a secondary con- 
sideration. As for the poor dear fairies, they 
had been placed under a ban by the followers 
of Jean Jacques. Fairy tales were treated as 
the novels of childhood, and held by this school 
to cultivate the heart and imagination unduly, 
and to arouse disgust ^with the assigned lot in 
life, which is rarely romantic, but consists 
rather of common-place pleasure and pain. 

The Edgeworths' ambition was to write the 
history of realities in an entertaining manner ; 
they held that it was better for purposes of edu- 
cation, and more suited to the tastes of children, 
than improbable fiction. The first proposition 
may, perhaps, be conceded, the second scarcely. 
In any case, however, Mr. Edgeworth, who had 
a special leaning to the jejime, had a partic- 
ular dislike to this form of fiction. ^' Why," he 
asked, ^'should the mind be filled with fantastic 
visions } Why should so much valuable time 
be lost } Why should we vitiate their taste 
and spoil their appetite by suffering them to 
feed upon sweetmeats.^" Even poetical allu- 



62 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

sions, he thought, should be avoided in books 
for children. On the other hand, with the 
happy intuition he often displayed, he recog- 
nized that the current children's books of his 
time erred in introducing too much that was 
purely didactic, too many general reflections. 
He urged his daughter to avoid these errors, to 
bear action in view, and that whether in morals 
or in science, the thing to be taught should 
seem to arise from the circumstances in which 
the little persons of the drama were placed. 
He saw that in order to prevent precepts from 
tiring the eye and mind, it was necessary to 
make the stories in which they were introduced 
dramatic, to keep alive hope, fear and curiosity 
by some degree of intricacy. 

Admirably did his daughter carry out the 
precepts he thus laid down. It was Miss Edge- 
worth who really inaugurated for England the 
reign of didactic fiction. Though never losing 
sight of her aim, she also never lost sight of the 
amusement of her young readers. She rightly 
comprehended that only by captivating their 
senses could she conquer and influence their 
reason. Her children's tales, written with 
motion and spirit, were told in the simple lan- 
guage of the young. She went straight to the 
hearts of her little readers because they could 
understand her ; they needed no grown person 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 63 

to explain to them sesquipedalian words. 
There is a freshness about her stories that 
children are quick to respond to, and it arises 
from the fact that the children she depicts for her 
readers are real. Miss Edgeworth knew what 
children were like ; she saw them not only from 
without but from within ; she had lived all her 
life among little people. Their world never 
became a paradise from which she was shut 
out. The advantages she thus enjoyed were as 
rare as they are important for the due compre- 
hension of the needs of childhood, and she util- 
ized them to the utmost. The chief charm of 
her tales, that which makes them sui generis 
both now and then, is that she not only wrote 
in the language of children, but, what is even 
rarer, from the child's point of view. 

There are yet among us those who owe their 
earliest pleasures to Miss Edgeworth, and if of 
late she has been somewhat jostled out of the 
nursery and school-room because it is the tend- 
ency of the modern child to revolt against all 
attempts to teach it unawares, we are far from 
sure that the change is wholly for the better. 
It was a just perception of this that caused 
Miss Yonge to say in The Stokesley Secret that 
her heroes ''would read any books that made 
no pretensions to be instructive, but even a 
fact about a lion or an elephant made them 



64 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

detect wisdom in disguise, and throw it aside.*' 
The modern child finds, it is said, Miss Edge- 
worth's tales dry ; American books of a semi- 
novelistic character, rattling stories of wild 
adventure, are preferred. 

This may be so, but we cannot help thinking 
that, just in these days, when the ethical stand- 
ard held up to children is not too high, a 
judicious admixture of these works with Miss 
Edgeworth's high-minded stories, inculcating 
self-sacrifice, unselfishness, obedience, and other 
neglected virtues, might be of great advantage. 
There are sundry of Miss Edgeworth's chil- 
dren's tales that are truly engrossing, veritable 
masterpieces of style and execution. Who is 
there, no matter how advanced his age, who 
cannot read with pleasure the tales of Lazy 
Lawrence, Tarlton, The Bracelets, Waste Not 
Want Not, Forgive and Forget, e tutti quanti ? 
Who is there whom it much disturbs that the 
account of Eton Montem is not accurate, and 
that perhaps there could have been nothing 
more unfortunate than to lay the scene of 
action of The Little Merchants in Naples, the 
one spot in all the earth where the events 
therein described could not have happened .? 
Change the name of the locality, the charm of. 
the tale remains and the absurdity is removed. 
Nor must it be forgotten that children, less 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS, 65 

well read than their elders, are less alive to 
these blemishes, which are, after all, of no real 
import. Of Simple Susan^ so great a person 
as Sir Walter Scott said that *'when the boy- 
brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is 
nothing for it but to put down the book and 
cry." Then as to Rosamond, who does not feel 
a true affection for that impetuous, impulsive 
little girl, and who is there (so greatly have 
our ideas of morality changed) that does not 
think that in the matter of the famous Purple 
JaVy an unjustifiable trick was played upon her 
by her mother? It was a part of the Edge- 
worth system to make misdirected or mistaken 
desires stultify themselves ; but the child 
should have been informed of the nature of » 
the jar, and if then she still persisted in her 
choice, she would have been fairly treated, 
which now she is not. Frank remains a capital 
book for little people, and if, occasionally. Miss 
Edgeworth's juvenile tales reflect too much of 
the stiff wisdom of her age, these are matters 
which children, not morally blase, hardly re- 
mark. On the other hand, there is never 
anything mawkish in her pages, she never fills 
the mind with yearnings for the impossible, 
she never works too much upon the suscepti- 
bilities, which modern child-literature so often 
does. Her writings for children are certainly 
3 



66 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

sui generis, not because she has attempted 
what has never been attempted before, but 
because she succeeded where others failed. 
She made even her youngest reader compre- 
hend that virtue is its own reward, while avoid- 
ing the error invariably fallen into by writers 
for the young, of representing virtues as always 
triumphant, vice as uniformly punished — a 
fallacy even children are quick to detect. It 
has been objected to her that she checks 
enthusiasm, the source of some of the noblest 
actions of mankind. This is true; she has 
somewhat erred on the repressive side, but her 
purpose was right and good. She saw plainly 
that enthusiasm, generous in its origin, is but 
too often the source of misfortune, ill-judged 
effort, and consequent disappointment. Mod- 
eration, the duties of contentment and industry, 
are what she loves to uphold ; the lower, hum- 
bler, but no less effective virtues of existence. 

On the other hand it is clear, from her 
letters, that she herself was not devoid of 
enthusiasm, and here, again, it was probably 
her father's influence that made her exclude 
it from her writings. In one of her letters 
she says : — 

Vive r enthousiasme I Without it characters may be 
very snug and comfortable in the world, but there is a 
degree of happiness which they will never taste, and of 
which they have no more idea than an oyster can have. 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS, 67 

Harry and Lucy falls sharply into two parts. 
The earlier portion was intended to be read 
before Rosa7nond^ and alter Frank; the latter 
was the last of the juvenile series. The work 
had been begun by Mr. Edgeworth and his 
wife Honora, from the need of a book to follow 
Mrs. Barbauld's lessons, and as a story to be 
inserted in this work Mr. Day had originally 
written Sandford and Merton. Harry a^id 
Lucy was printed, but not published. It was 
kept, as originally meant, only for the Edge- 
worth children ; but after more than twenty 
years Mr. Edgeworth passed the work on to 
his daughter, and bade her complete it and 
prepare it for publication. The first portion 
thus came out early in the century, while the 
last part did not appear till 1825. 

Hafry and Lucy is unquestionably heavy in 
parts, especially the latter half, yet first prin- 
ciples are well explained and popularized, and 
instruction and tale so skillfully blended that 
the young reader cannot skip the one and read 
the other. The main idea and the chief merit 
of these volumes, not at, once perhaps obvious, 
is that of enforcing in a popular form the 
necessity of exercising the faculties of children, 
so that they should be, in part, their own 
instructors, and of adding to those more com- 
mon incentives to study, which consist of 



68 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

rewards and punishments, the far surer, nobler 
and more effective stimulus of curiosity kept 
alive by variety and the pleasure of successful 
invention. It was the desire of the authors to 
show with what ease the faculty of thinking 
may be cultivated in children, a point on which 
Miss Edgeworth insists in other of her tales. 
In Harry and Lucy are explained simply and 
familiarly, sometimes in conversations between 
the children and their parents and friends, 
sometimes in dialogue between the children 
themselves, the rudiments of science, princi- 
pally of chemistry and physics, and the applica- 
tion of these to the common purposes of life. 
And herein we again encounter one of the 
grand merits of the Edgeworths, which we 
can to-day better appreciate than their contem- 
poraries. They saw clearly what in their day 
was apprehended only by very few, the impor- 
tance that the study of science was to acquire 
in the future. Miss Edgeworth says : — 

My father long ago foresaw that the taste for scientific 
as well as literary knowledge, which has risen so rapidly 
and spread so widely, would render it necessary to make 
some provision for the early instruction of youth in 
science, in addition to the great and successful attention 
paid to classical literatures. 

And even apart from the immense importance 
of science in our daily life, science is, of all 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS, 69 

studies, that best suited to the growth of a 
child's mental powers. Novelty and variety 
are the spells of early life, and to work these 
well and helpfully is the greatest good that 
can be done to young people. Miss Edgeworth, 
in Harry and Lucy^ as a whole succeeds in 
rousing her reader's curiosity without making 
them suspect design, and avoids all idea of a 
task. Thus the leading principles of science 
are unfolded in familiar experiments which give 
young learners the delight they would have in 
playing some interesting game, exercising their 
ingenuity without tiring them. Then, having 
once felt the pleasures of success, a permanent 
incentive to knowledge is induced, which it 
remains with the parents or tutors to improve. 
The books are obviously not such as are meant 
to be read at a sitting, and therefore can only 
be put into the hands of young people with 
-judicious care. But in the Edgeworths' time 
neither old nor young devoured books after the 
manner of to-day. The apparently desultory 
and accidental plan of the book was really 
designed, purpose and moral being more skill- 
fully disguised than is the case with Miss 
Edgeworth's tales for her equals. One of its 
great charms lies in the characters of the 
principal dramatis personce^ whose tempera- 
ments are exquisitely sketched, maintained and 



70 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

contrasted. Lucy, the lively, playful girl, who 
often allows her imagination to go rambling 
far afield from her judgment, a little inclined 
to be volatile, loving a joke, is cousin german 
to Rosamond, and, like this little girl, truly 
lovable. She supplies the lighter element, 
while the sterner is supplied by Harry, the 
brother she idolizes, who is partly her com- 
panion, partly her teacher. He has a sure and 
steady rather than a brilliant and rapid intellect, 
great mental curiosity and great patience in 
acquiring information. He is more apt to 
discern differences than to perceive resem- 
blances, and therefore he does not always under- 
stand the wit and fun of Lucy, which at times 
even provoke him. In the conversations be- 
tween them there is much judicious sprinkling 
of childish banter and nonsense, ^'an alloy 
necessary to make sense work well,'' to use 
Miss Edgeworth's own expressive words. A 
pity that the ever-delightful '^ Great Panjan- 
drum" therein introduced is not her own, but 
only a quotation from a little-known nonsense 
genius. 

This sequel to Harry and Lucy was far from 
finding universal favor. Sir Walter Scott wrote 
of it to Joanna Baillie : — 

I have not the pen of our friend Miss Edgeworth, who 
writes all the while she laughs, talks, eats and drinks, and 



CHILDREN'S BOOKS. 7 1 

I believe, though I do not pretend to be so far in the 
secret, all the time she sleeps too. She has good luck in 
having a pen which walks at once so unweariedly and so 
well. I do not, however, quite like her last book on edu- 
cation {Harry and Lucy), considered as a general work. 
She should have limited the title to Education in Nat- 
ural Philosophy, or some such term, for there is no great 
use in teaching children in general to roof houses or build 
bridges, which, after all, a carpenter or a mason does a 
great deal better at 2s. 6d. a day. Your ordinary Harry 
should be kept to his grammar, and your Lucy of most 
common occurrence would be kept employed on her sam- 
pler, instead of wasting wood and cutting their fingers, 
which I am convinced they did, though their historian 
says nothing of it. 

That both she and her father exacted much 
from their pupils and readers is beyond ques- 
tion, but they regarded this as a wholesome 
effort, and they were probably right. One thing 
is certain : that whatever their shortcomings, 
Miss Edgeworth's children's tales exercised a 
wide, deep and lasting influence over a long 
range of time, and nothing of equal or even 
approximate importance arose coeval with them. 
It was she who first brought rational morality 
to the level of the comprehension of childhood, 
who taught the language of virtue and truth in 
the alphabet of the young, thus forestalling the 
teaching of schools by her rare power of com- 
bining ethics with entertainment. Miss Edge- 
worth can still with advantage and pleasure 



72 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

hold her own even upon the present well-stocked 
nursery book-shelves, and it might be well for 
the next generation if we saw her there a little 
oftener. Better Miss Edgeworth any day, with 
all her arid utilitarianism, her realism, than the 
sickly sentimental unrealities of a far too popu- 
lar modern school. 



CHAPTER VI. 

IRISH AND MORAL TALES. 

In 1800 was published anonymously a small 
book called Castle Rackrent, It professed to be 
a Hibernian tale, taken from facts and from the 
manners of the Irish squires before the year 
1782. It proved to be a most entertaining, 
witty history of the fortunes of an Irish estate, 
told professedly by an illiterate, partial old stew- 
ard, who recounted the story of the Rackrent 
family in his vernacular with the full confidence 
that the affairs of Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, 
Sir Kit and Sir Condy were as interesting to 
all the world as they were to himself. Honest 
Thaby, as this curious but characteristic speci- 
men of Irish good humor, fidelity and wrong- 
headedness was pleased to call himself, having 
no conception of the true application of this ep- 
ithet, had certainly shown literary perception, 
or rather his creator for him. For this was no 
other than Maria Edgeworth, who stood con- 
fessed upon the title-page of the second editidti 
that was clamorously demanded within a few 



74 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

months of issue. The confession was wrung 
from her because some one had not only assert- 
ed that he was the author, but had actually 
taken the trouble to copy out several pages with 
corrections and erasures, as if it were his origi- 
nal manuscript. It was in this work that Miss 
Edgeworth first struck her own peculiar vein, 
and had she never written anything but Castle 
Rackrent her fame could not have died. It is a 
page torn from the national history of Ireland, 
inimitable, perennially delightful, equally humor- 
ous and pathetic, holding up with shrewd wit 
and keen perception, mingled with sympathetic 
indulgence, the follies and vices that have caused, 
and in a modified degree still cause, no small 
proportion of the social miseries that have 
afflicted and still afflict that unhappy land. 

Here are portrayed a series of Irish landlords 
with their odd discrepancies and striking indi- 
vidualities, alternately drunken, litigious, pugil- 
istic, slovenly and densely ignorant ; or else easy, 
extravagant and good-natured to the point of 
vice ; all, however, of one mind in being pro- 
foundly indifferent to their own or their ten- 
ants' welfare. The sharp contrasts of the mag- 
nificent and paltry that characterized their 
state of living, with the mixed confidence in a 
special Providence and their own good luck 
that distinguished their muddle-headed mode of 



CASTLE RACK RENT. 75 

thought, is forcibly held up to view. No con- 
clusions are drawn ; the narrative, which never 
flags or drags, is rattled off with spirit, the abun- 
dant anecdotes are poured forth with true Irish 
exuberance, while the humor of the story arises 
in great measure from the sublime unconscious- 
ness of the story-teller to the wit, nai'vete or 
absurdity of his remarks. We are held spell- 
bound, we laugh and weep in a breath, we are 
almost over-persuaded by loyal old Thady to 
pardon the errors of the family, '^ one of the 
most ancient in the kingdom, related to the 
kings of Ireland, but that was before my time.'' 
If there was an ulterior end in view in this 
story beyond that of recording national charac- 
teristics which she had had peculiarly good 
opportunities for observing, and which she here 
reproduced from the life with broad, full strokes, 
Miss Edgeworth has masked it so happily that it 
does not obtrude itself. The society and man- 
ners of the Irish are painted as equally provok- 
ing and endearing. The book is an epitome of 
the Irish character, "fighting like devils for 
conciliation, and hating one another for the love 
of God. " Never did laughter and tears, sympa- 
thy and repugnance, lie more closely together 
than in this tale. It is curious to read the 
author's prefatory apology when there are still 
alive, in every exasperated form, the very con- 



76 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

ditions she thinks belong to a state of things 
rapidly passing away, ''owing to the probable 
loss of Irish identity after the union with Eng- 
land/' The supposed ''obsolete prejudices and 
animosities of race '' are unhappily still extant. 
Perhaps it is partly this fact that makes Miss 
Edgeworth's Irish tales so fresh to this day. 
But only in part ; on their own account alone 
they are delightful, and Castle Rackrent even 
more than the rest. 

We have Mrs. Barbauld's testimony that Miss 
Edgeworth wrote Castle Rackrent unassisted by 
her father, and judging how infinitely superior 
in spontaneity, flexibility, and nervousness of 
style, force, pith and boldness, it is to those of 
her writings with which he meddled, it is forci- 
bly impressed upon us that Mr. Edgeworth's 
literary tinkering of his daughter's works was 
far from being to their advantage. Her next 
published book was her first attempt to deal 
with the novel proper. In Belinda she strove 
to delineate the follies and hollowness of fash- 
ionable life. The heroine is rather a lifeless 
puppet ; but the more truly prominent figure, 
Lady Delacour, is drawn with power and keen 
intuition. A woman of gay and frivolous ante- 
cedents, striving to rise into a higher atmos- 
phere under the ennobling influences of a pure 
friendship, and finding the task a difficult one, 



BELINDA. 77 

was no easy character to draw or to sustain. 
Had Lady Delacour died heroically, as Miss 
Edgeworth had planned, and as the whole 
course of the story leads the reader to expect, 
the book would have been a success. But to 
allow her to recover, to cause her to evolve a 
reformed character after a type psychologically 
impossible to one of her temperament, weakened 
the force of the foregoing pages and rendered 
them untrue. Again, it is on Miss Edgeworth's 
spoken testimony to Mrs. Barbauld that we 
learn that she meant to make Lady Delacour 
die, but that it was her father who suggested 
the alteration ; and since it was a part of the 
Edgeworthian creed to believe in such simple 
and sudden reformations, she accepted his coun- 
sel, to the artistic injury of her tale. It was 
Mr. Edgeworth, too, who wrote and interpolated 
the worthless and high-flown Virginia episode, 
in which Clarence Harvey takes to the freak of 
wife-training after the pattern of Mr. Day. 
This incident is quite out of keeping with the 
character of Clarence, who is depicted a wooden 
dandy, but not a romantic fool. These changes, 
willingly submitted to by Miss Edgeworth, who 
had the most unbounded belief in her father's 
superior wisdom on all points whatsoever, also 
mark his idiosyncracy, for Mr. Edgeworth was 
a most rare and curious compound of utilitarian- 
ism and wild romance. 



78 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

It is almost possible, in Miss Edgeworth's 
works, to venture to point out ^the passages 
that have been tampered with and those where 
she has been allowed free play. Thus there 
are portions of Belinda in which she is as much 
at her best as in Castle Rackrenty or other of 
her masterpieces. Who but she could have 
penned the lively description given by Sir 
Philip Baddeley of the fetes at Frogmore ? 
How exquisitely is this ill-natured fool made 
to paint himself, how truthful is the picture, 
free from any taint of exaggeration ! Sir 
Philip's endeavor to disgust Belinda with 
Clarence Harvey, his manner of attempting 
it, and his final proposal, is a very masterpiece 
of caustic humor. 

Belinda was no favorite with Miss Edge- 
worth. Writing to Mrs. Barbauld some years 
later, she says : — 

Belinda is but an uninteresting personage after all. 
. . . I was not either in Belinda or Leonora suffi- 
ciently aware that the goodness of a heroine interests 
only in proportion to the perils and trials to which it is 
exposed. 

And again, after revising it for republication, 
she says : — 

I really was so provoked with the cold tameness of 
that stick or stone, Belinda, that I could have torn the 



BELINDA, 79 

pages to pieces ; really I have not the heart or the 
patience to correct her. As the hackney coachman said, 
" Mend you I Better make a new one." 

Miss Edgeworth was therefore capable of 
self-criticism. Indeed, at no time did she set 
even a due value on her own work, still less an 
exaggerated one. To the day of her death she 
sincerely believed that all the honor and glory 
she had reaped belonged of right to her father 
alone. But there was yet another reason why 
Miss Edgeworth never liked Belinda, She was 
staying at Black Castle when the first printed 
copy reached her. Before her aunt saw it she 
contrived to tear out the title-pages of the 
three volumes, and Mrs. Ruxton thus read it 
without the least suspicion as to its authorship. 
She was much delighted, and insisted on read- 
ing out to her niece passage after passage. 
Miss Edgeworth pretended to be deeply inter- 
ested in some book she was herself reading, 
and when Mrs. Ruxton exclaimed, '^ Is not that 
admirably written } '' replied, '^Admirably read, 
I think.'' '' It may not be so very good," added 
Mrs. Ruxton, ''but it shows just the sort of 
knowledge of high life which people have who 
live in the world." But in vain she appealed 
to Miss Edgeworth for sympathy, until, pro- 
voked by her faint acquiescence, Mrs. Ruxton 
at last accused her of being envious. ''I am 



8o MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

sorry to see my little Maria unable to bear the 
praises of a rival author." This remark made 
Miss Edgeworth burst into tears and show her 
aunt the title-pages of the book. But Mrs. 
Ruxton was not pleased ; she never wholly liked 
Belinda afterwards, and Miss Edgeworth had 
always a painful recollection that her aunt had 
suspected her of the meanness of envy. 

In 1802 was published the Essay 07t Irish 
Biillsy bearing on its title-page the names of 
father and daughter. Its title appears to have 
misled even the Irish : at least it is related that 
an Irish gentleman, secretary to an agricult- 
ural society, who was much interested in 
improving the breed of Irish cattle, sent for it, 
expecting to find a work on live stock. We 
have Miss Edgeworth's own account of the 
genesis of the book : — 

The first design of the essay was my father's : under 
the semblance of attack, he wished to show the English 
public the eloquence, wit and talents of the lower classes 
of people in Ireland. Working zealously upon the ideas 
which he suggested, sometimes what was spoken by him 
was afterwards written by me ; or when I wrote my 
first thoughts, they were corrected and improved by 
him ; so that no book was ever written more completely 
in partnership. On this, as on most subjects, whether 
light or serious, when we wrote together, it would now be 
difficult, almost impossible, to recollect which thoughts 
originally were his and which were mine. All passages 



ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS, 8 1 

in which there are Latin quotations or classical allusions 
must be his exclusively, because I am entirely ignorant 
of the learned languages. The notes on the Dublin 
shoe-black's metaphorical language I recollect are chiefly 
his. 

I have heard him tell that story with all the natural, 
indescribable Irish tones and gestures, of which written 
language can give but a faint idea. He excelled in 
imitating the Irish, because he never overstepped the 
modesty or the assurance of nature. He marked ex- 
quisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit of the 
people, without condescending to produce effect by 
caricature. He knew not only their comic talents, but 
their powers of pathos; and often when he had just 
heard from them some pathetic complaint, he has re- 
peated it to me while the impression was fresh. In the 
chapter on wit and eloquence in Irish Bulls there is a 
speech of a poor freeholder to a candidate who asked 
for his vote; this speech was made to my father when 
he was canvassing the county of Longford. It was 
repeated to me a few hours afterwards, and I wrote it 
down instantly, without, I believe, the variation of a 
word. 

The complaint of a poor widow against her 
landlord, and his reply, were quoted by Camp- 
bell in his Lectures on Eloquence^ as happy 
specimens, under the conviction that they were 
fictitious. Miss Edgeworth assures us that they 
are ** unembellished facts," that her father was 
the magistrate before whom the complaint and 
defense were made, and that she wrote down 
the speeches word for word as he repeated 



82 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

them to her. This Essay on Irish Bulls^ 
though a somewhat rambhng and discursive 
composition, is a readable one, full of good 
stories, pathetic and humorous. Besides giving 
critical and apt illustrations, the authors did 
justice to the better traits of the Irish char- 
acter. It was an earnest vindication of the 
national intellect from the charge of habitual 
blundering, showing how blundering is common 
to all countries, and is no more Irish than 
Persian. They further proved that most so- 
called bulls are no bulls at all, but often a 
poetic license, a heart-spoken effusion, and that 
thus the offense became a grace beyond the 
reach of art. 

Moral Tales also saw the light in 1801. 
They too were written to illustrate Practical 
Education^ but aimed at readers of a more 
advanced age than the children's tales ; in fact, 
both here and elsewhere Miss Edgeworth strove 
to do on a larger scale what was achieved by 
the ancient form of parable, to make an attract- 
ive medium for the instruction and conviction 
of minds. It was a fancy of hers, and perhaps 
a characteristic of her age, when female author- 
ship was held in somewhat doubtful repute, 
that she invariably insisted on appearing before 
the public under cover of her father's name. 
He therefore wrote for Moral Tales, as after- 



MORAL TALES, 83 

wards for all her works, one of his ludicrously 
bombastic prefaces, which, whatever they may 
have done in his own time, would certainly 
to-day be the most effective means of repelling 
readers. The stories are six in number : For- 
ester^ The Prussian Vase, The Good Atmt^ Ange- 
lina, The Good French Governess, and Mademoi- 
selle Pa7tache, Of these the plots are for the 
most part poorly contrived, the narrative ham- 
mered out invita Minerva, and, owing to their 
aim, nothing capricious or accidental is per- 
mitted. Too obviously they are the mature 
fruits of purpose and reflection, not happy effu' 
sions of the fancy, and hence also not always 
successful. Sometimes the fault lay with the 
subject that afforded too little scope, sometimes 
the moral striven after did not admit of the 
embellishments requisite for a work of amuse- 
ment. One thing, however, is certain : that 
Miss Edgeworth honestly endeavored to com- 
bine entertainment with instruction, and that, 
taken as a whole, she succeeded. She did not 
shelter herself behind the saying that // est per- 
inis d' ennuyer en moralites d'ici Jusqud Con- 
stantinople. But it is the key to her writings, 
to their excellences and their defects, that the 
duty of a moral teacher was always uppermost 
in her mind. Her aim was not to display her 
own talents, but to make her readers substan- 



84 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

tially better and happier, to show how easy and 
agreeable to practice are high principles. 
Again and again she insists, with irrefragable 
force, that it is the ordinary and attainable 
qualities of life rather than the lofty and heroic 
ones on which our substantial happiness depends, 
an insistance new in the domain of fiction, 
which as a rule preaches other doctrines. 
With this end in view she had necessarily to 
sacrifice some freedom and grace of invention 
to illustrate her moral aphorisms, her salutary 
truths, and she yielded to the temptation to 
exaggerate in order to make her work more 
impressive. Her Moral Tales are a series of 
climaces of instances, an enlargement of La 
Bruyere's idea, a method allowable to creations 
of fancy, but not quite justifiable when applied 
to the probable. Moreover, it was a feature of 
the eighteenth century, to which in many re- 
spects Miss Edgeworth belonged, that its tales 
and novels were not analytic. Psychology based 
upon biology was as yet unknown, or in so 
empirical a stage as to be remote from practi- 
cal application. The writers of those days 
depict their characters not as the complex bun- 
dles of good and bad qualities and potentialities 
that even the veriest scribbler paints them 
to-day, but as sharply good or bad, so that one 
flaw of character, one vice, one folly, was made 



MORAL TALES. 85 

to be the origin of all their disasters. It is, 
of course, always dangerous when the author 
plays the part of Providence, and can twist the 
narrative to suit the moral; but this censure 
applies to all moral tales, by no matter whom. 
Miss Edgeworth strove to civilize and instruct 
by the rehearsal of a tale, and if we all, from 
the perversity of human nature, rather revolt 
against being talked to for our good, it must 
ever be added in her praise that she generally 
allures us and makes us listen to her maxims of 
right living. Her self-imposed task was neither 
humble nor easy, but one that required judg- 
ment, patience and much knowledge of the 
world ; her moral wholesomeness cannot be 
rated too highly or be too much commended. 
If she ascribed too large a share of morality to 
the head instead of the heart, this was the 
result of the doctrines with which her father 
had imbued her. 

The most successful of the Moral Tales is 
beyond question Angelina. Its moral is not 
obtrusive, its fable is well constructed, the tale 
is told with point, spirit, gentle but incisive 
satire. The sentimental young lady, a female 
Don Quixote, roaming the world in search of 
an unknown friend whose acquaintance she has 
made solely through the medium of her writ- 
ings, is a genus that is not extinct. Never has 



86 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

Miss Edgeworth been happier than here, when 
she combats her heroine's errors, not by serious 
arguments, but with the shafts of ridicule. The 
tale is a gem. Forester^ on the other hand, for 
which Mr. Edgeworth claims that it is a male 
version of the same character, does not strike 
us in that light, nor is it as perfect in concep- 
tion or execution. The character of the eccen- 
tric youth who scorns the common forms of 
civilized society, and is filled with visionary 
schemes of benevolence and happiness, was 
based, it would seem, upon that of Mr. Day, 
and, as a portrait, was doubtless a happy one. 
But the hero fails to interest, his aberrations 
are simply foolish, the means whereby he is 
redeemed too mechanical and crude, the whole 
both too detailed and too much condensed to 
hold our attention or to seem probable. The 
Good Fre7ich Governess embodies the Edge- 
worthian mode of giving lessons, which was to 
make them pleasures, not tasks, to the pupils ; 
maxims now universally recognized and prac- 
ticed, but new in the days when for little 
children there were no pleasant roads to learn- 
ing in the shape of kindergarten. The Good 
Aunt insists upon the necessity of home 
example and instruction, the lack of which no 
school training can supply. It is the weakest 
of all the tales, and verges dangerously upon 



MORAL TALES, 8/ 

the namby-pamby. Mademoiselle Panache, ac- 
cording to Mr. Edgeworth, is "a sketch of the 
necessary consequences of imprudently trust- 
ing the happiness of a daughter to the care of 
those who can teach nothing but accomplish- 
ments;'' but which, according to most readers, 
will be pronounced the melancholy result of 
an ignorance that could mistake an illiterate 
French milliner for an accomplished French 
governess. It is unjust to lay the results of 
the tuition of such a personage to the charge 
of that favorite scape-goat — the frivolity of 
the French nation. The Prussian Vase, a tale, 
again according to Mr. Edgeworth, '^designed 
principally for young gentlemen who are 
intended for the bar,'' is a pretty but apocry- 
phal anecdote attributed to Frederic the Great, 
of a nature impossible to the mental bias of 
that enlightened despot. It is, moreover, an 
eulogium of the English mode of trial by jury. 
Taken as a whole, these tales may be said to 
enforce the doctrine that unhappiness is more 
often the result of defects of character than of 
external circumstances. Like all Miss Edge- 
worth's writings, they found instant favor and 
were translated into French and German. 
With no desire to detract from their merits, we 
cannot avoid the inference that this circum- 
stance points to a great lack of contemporary 
foreign fiction of a pure and attractive kind. 



n 



CHAPTER VII. 

IN FRANCE AND AT HOME. 

The peace, or rather the truce, of Amiens had 
induced many travellers to visit France. They 
all returned enraptured with what they had seen 
of society in Paris, and with the masterpieces 
of art dragged thither, as the spoils of military 
despotism. Letters from some of these tourists 
awakened in Mr. Edgeworth a wish to revisit 
France. The desire took shape as resolve after 
the visit to Edgeworthstown of M. Pictet, of 
Geneva, who promised the family letters of 
introduction to, and a cordial welcome among, 
the thinkers of the land. As translator of 
Practical Educationy and as the editor of the 
Bibliotheque BritanniqtiCy^ in which he had pub- 
lished most of Miss Edgeworth's Moral Tales^ 
and detailed criticisms of both father and 
daughter, he had certainly prepared the way for 
their favorable reception. The tour was there- 

* Miss Edgeworth erroneously, but persistently, speaks of 
this publication as the Journal Britannique, 



LEICESTER, 89 

fore arranged for the autumn of 1 802, a roomy 
coach was purchased, and in September Mr., 
Mrs., Miss and Miss Charlotte Edgeworth 
started for their continental trip. 

The series of letters Miss Edgeworth wrote 
home during this time are most entertaining, 
unaffected, sprightly and graphic. She often 
sketches a character, a national peculiarity, 
with a touch, while on the other hand she does 
not shirk detail if only she can succeed in pre- 
senting a vivid picture of all she is beholding 
to those dear ones at home who are debarred 
from the same enjoyment. Carnarvon, Bangor, 
Etruria and Leicester were visited on the way 
out. At Leicester Miss Edgeworth had an 
amusing adventure : — 

Handsome town, good shops. Walked, whilst dinner 
was getting ready, to a circulating library. My father 
asked for Belinda^ Bulls, etc. : found they were in good 
repute; Castle Rackrent in better — the others often 
borrowed, but Castle Rackrent often bought. The book- 
seller, an open-hearted man, begged us to look at a 
book of poems just published by a Leicester lady, a Miss 
Watts. I recollected to have seen some years ago a 
specimen of this lady's proposed translation of Tasso, 
which my father had highly admired. He told the 
bookseller that we would pay our respects to Miss 
Watts if it would be agreeable to her. When we had 
dined we set out with our enthusiastic bookseller. We 
were shown by the light of a lantern along a very nar- 



90 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

row passage between high walls, to the door of a decent- 
looking house : a maid-servant, candle in hand, received 
us. "Be pleased, ladies, to walk up stairs." A neatish 
room, nothing extraordinary in it except the inhabit- 
ants : Mrs. Watts, a tall, black-eyed, prim, dragon-looking 
woman, in the background; Miss Watts, a tall young 
lady in white, fresh color, fair, thin, oval face, rather 
pretty. The moment Mrs. Edgeworth entered, Miss 
Watts, taking her for the authoress, darted forward with 
arms, long thin arms, outstretched to their utmost swing. 
" Oh, what an honor this is ! " each word and syllable 
rising in tone till the last reached a scream. Instead of 
embracing my mother, as her first action threatened, 
she started back to the farthest end of the room, which 
was not light enough to show her attitude distinctly, but 
it seemed to be intended to express the receding of awe- 
struck admiration — stopped by the wall. Charlotte and 
I passed by unnoticed, and seated ourselves, by the old 
lady's desire ; she, after many twistings of her wrists, 
elbows and neck, all of which appeared to be dislocated, 
fixed herself in her arm-chair, resting her hands on the 
black mahogany splayed elbows. Her person was no 
sooner at rest than her eyes and all her features began 
to move in all directions. She looked like a nervous 
and suspicious person electrified. She seemed to be 
the acting partner in this house, to watch over her treas- 
ure of a daughter, to supply her with wordly wisdom, to 
look upon her as a phoenix, and — scold her. 

Miss Watts was all ecstasy and lifting up of hands 
and eyes, speaking always in that loud, shrill, theatrical 
tone with which a puppet-master supplies his puppets. 
I all the time sat like a mouse. My father asked, 
"Which of those ladies, madam, do you think is your 
sister-authoress .f^ " "I am no physiognomist" — in a 
screech — "but I do imagine that to be the lady," 



"V' tV tmi, n^ixfi ■iu/»mim:.imiiataimi^is^ 



LEICESTER. 9 1 

bowing, as she sat, almost to the ground, and pointing 
to Mrs. Edgeworth. "No; guess again." "Then that 
must be she," bowing to Charlotte. "No." "Then 
this lady," looking forward to see what sort of an animal 
I was, for she had never seen me till this instant. To 
make me some amends, she now drew her chair close to 
me and began to pour forth praises : " Lady Delacour, 
oh ! Letters for Literary Ladies^ oh ! " 

Now for the pathetic part. This poor girl sold a novel 
in four volumes for ten guineas to Lane. My father is 
afraid, though she has considerable talents, to recom- 
mend her to Johnson, lest she should not answer ! Poor 
girl ! what a pity she had no friend to direct her talents ! 
How much she made me feel the value of mine ! 

After a trip through the Low Countries, the 
travellers entered France and received many 
civilities in all the towns they passed through, 
thanks to the fact that the Bibliotheque Britan- 
niqiie was taken in every public library. At 
Paris the Edgeworths were admitted into the 
best society of the period, which consisted of 
the remains of the French nobility, and of men 
of letters and science. The old Abbe Morellet, 
'* respected as one of the most reasonable of all 
the wits of France," the doye^t of French litera- 
ture, was a previous acquaintance. By his 
introductions and those of M. Pictet, added to 
the prestige of their own names and their 
relationship to the Abbe Edgeworth, the most 
exclusive houses were opened to the family, 
and they thus became acquainted with every 



92 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

one worth knowing, among whom were La 
Harpe, Madame de Genhs, Kosciusko, Madame 
Recamier, the Comte de Segur, Dumont, Suard, 
Camille Jordan. In all circles the subject of 
politics was carefully avoided; the company 
held themselves aloof, and wilfully ignored the 
important issues that were surging around 
them ; their conversation turned chiefly on new 
plays, novels and critical essays. As is usual 
in such small circles with limited interests, a 
good deal of mutual admiration was practiced, 
and the Edgeworths received their due share. 

At the Abbe Morellet's Miss Edgeworth met 
Madame d'Oudinot, Rousseau's "Julie.'' This 
is her impression : — 

Julie is now seventy-two years of age, a thin woman in 
a little black bonnet; she appeared to me shockingly 
ugly; she squints so much that it is impossible to tell 
which way she is looking ; but no sooner did I hear her 
speak than I began to like her, and no sooner was I 
seated beside her than I began to find in her counte- 
nance a most benevolent and agreeable expression, * She 
entered into conversation immediately; her manner 
invited and could not fail to obtain confidence. She 
seems as gay and open-hearted as a girl of fifteen. ' It 
has been said of her that she not only never did any 
harm, but never suspected any. She is possessed of that 
art which Lord Kaimes said he would prefer to the finest 
gift from the queen of the fairies : the art of seizing the 
best side of every object. She has had great misfortunes, 
but she has still retained the power of making herself and 



ROUSSEAU'S ^'JULIEr 93 

her friends happy. Even during the horrors of the Rev- 
olution, if she met with a flower, a butterfly, an agreeable 
smell, a pretty color, she would turn her attention to 
these, and for a moment suspend the sense of misery — 
not from frivolity, but from real philosophy. No one has 
exerted themselves with more energy in the service of 
her friends. I felt in her company the delightful influ- 
ence of a cheerful temper and soft, attractive manners — 
enthusiasm which age cannot extinguish, and which 
spends, but does not waste itself on small but not trifling 
objects. I wish I could at seventy-two be such a woman ! 
She told me that Housseau, whilst he was writing so 
finely on education, and leaving his own children in the 
Foundling Hospital, defended himself with so much elo- 
quence that even those who blamed him in their hearts 
could not find tongues to answer him. Once at dinner at 
Madame d'Oudinot's there was a fine pyramid of fruit. 
Rousseau in helping himself took the peach which formed 
the base of the pyramid, and the rest fell immediately. 
" Rousseau," said she, " that i^ what you always do with 
all our systems ; you pull down with a single touch ; but 
who will build up what you pull down? " I asked if he 
was grateful for all the kindness shown to him. " No, 
he was ungrateful ; he had a thousand bad qualities, but 
I turned my attention from them to his genius and the 
good he had done mankind." 

La Harpe was visited in his own home : — 

He lives in a wretched house, and we went up dirty 
stairs, through dirty passages, where I wondered how 
fine ladies' trains and noses could go ; and were received 
in a dark, small den by the philosopher, or rather devof^ 
for he spurns the name of philosopher. He was in a 
dirty, reddish night-gown, and very dirty night-cap bound 



94 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

round the forehead with a superlatively dirty, chocolate- 
colored ribbon. Madame Rdcamier, the beautiful, the 
elegant, robed in white satin, trimmed with white fur, 
seated herself on the elbow of his arm-chair, and besought 
him to repeat his verses. Charlotte has drawn a picture 
of this scene. 

An interesting visit was also paid to Madame 
de Genlis : — 

She had previously written to say she would be glad 
to be personally acquainted with Mr. and Miss Edge- 
worth. She lives — where do you think .f^ — where Sully 
used to live, at the Arsenal. Bonaparte has given her 
apartments there. Now, I do not know what you imagine 
in reading Sully's memoirs, but I always imagined that 
the Arsenal was one large building with a fagade to it, 
like a very large hotel or a palace, and I fancied it was 
somewhere in the middle of Paris. On the contrary, it is 
quite in the suburbs. We drove on and on, and at last 
we came to a heavy archway, like what you see at the 
entrance to a fortified town. We drove under it for the 
length of three or four yards in total darkness, and then 
we found ourselves, as well as we could see by the light 
of some dim lamps, in a large square court surrounded by 
buildings : here we thought we were to alight. No such 
thing : the coachman drove under another thick archway, 
lighted at the entrance by a single lamp. We found our- 
selves in another court, and still we went on, archway 
after archway, court after court, in all which reigned des- 
olate silence. I thought the archways and the courts and 
the desolate silence would never end. At last the coach- 
man stopped, and asked for the tenth time where the lady 
lived. It is excessively difficult to find people in Paris; 



MADAME DE GENUS, 95 

we thought the names of Madame de Genlis and the 
Arsenal would have been sufficient ; but the whole of this 
congregation of courts and gateways and houses is called 
the Arsenal ; and hundreds and hundreds of people inhabit 
it who are probably perfect strangers to Madame de Gen- 
lis. At the doors where our coachman inquired, some 
answered that they knew nothing of her ; some that she 
lived in the Faubourg St. Germain; others beheved that 
she might be at Passy ; others had heard that she had 
apartments given to her by the Government somewhere 
in the Arsenal, but could not tell where. While 
the coachman thus begged his way, we, anxiously^* 
looking out at him from the middle of the great square'^* 
where we were left, listened for the answers that were 
given, and which often from the distance escaped our 
ears. At last a door pretty near to us opened, and our 
coachman's head and hat were illuminated by the candle 
held by the person who opened the door ; and as the two 
figures parted from each other, we could distinctly see 
the expression of the countenances and their lips move. 
The result of this parley was successful; we were directed 
to the house where Madame de Genlis lived, and thought 
all difficulties ended. No such thing; her apartments 
were still to be sought for. We saw before us a large, 
crooked, ruinous stone staircase, lighted by a single bit 
of candle hanging in a vile tin lantern, in an angle of the 
bare wall at the turn of the staircase — only just light 
enough to see that the walls were bare and old, and the 
stairs immoderately dirty. There were no signs of the 
place being inhabited except this lamp, which could not 
have been lighted without hands. I stood still in melan- 
choly astonishment, while my father groped his way into 
a kind of porter's lodge or den at the foot of the stairs, 
where he found a man who was porter to various people 



96 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

who inhabited this house. You know the Parisian houses 
are inhabited by hordes of different people, and the stairs 
are in fact streets, and dirty streets, to their dweUings. 
The porter, who was neither obliging nor intelligent, 
carelessly said that '''•Madame de Genlis logeait au 
seconde d gauche, quHlfaudrait tirer sa sonnette''^ — he 
believed she was at home if she was not gone out. Up 
we went by ourselves, for this porter, though we were 
strangers and pleaded that we were so, never offered to 
stir a step to guide or to light us. When we got to the 
second stage, we finally saw, by the light from the one 
candle at the first landing-place, two dirty, large folding 
doors, one set on the right and one on the left, and hav- 
ing on each a bell no larger than what you see in the 
small parlor of a small English inn. My father pulled 
one bell and waited some minutes — no answer; pulled 
the other bell and waited — no answer; thumped at the 
left door — no answer; pushed and pulled at it — could 
not open it ; pushed open one of the right-hand folding 
doors — utter darkness; went in as well as we could 
feel — there was no furniture. After we had been there 
a few seconds we could discern the bare walls and some 
strange lumber in one corner. The room was a prodig- 
ious height, like an old play-house, and we went down 
again to the stupid or surly porter. He came up stairs 
very unwillingly, and pointed to a deep recess between 
the stairs and the folding doors : ^' A lies I voila la portej 
tirez la sonnette.^'' He and his candle went down, and 
my father had just time to seize the handle of the bell, 
when we were again in darkness. After ringing this 
feeble bell, we presently heard doors open and little 
footsteps approaching nigh. The door was opened by a 
girl of about Honora's size, holding an ill-set-up, waver- 
ing candle in her hand, the light of which fell full upon 



MADAME DE GENLIS, 97 

her face and figure. Her face was remarkably intelli- 
gent, dark, sparkling eyes, dark hair, curled in the most 
fashionable long corkscrew ringlets over her eyes and 
cheeks. She parted the ringlets to take a full view of 
us, and we were equally impatient to take a full view 
of her. The dress of her figure by no means suited the 
head and the elegance of her attitude. What her "nether 
weeds " might be we could not distinctly see, but they 
seemed to be a coarse, short petticoat, like what Molly 
Bristow's children would wear, not on Sundays; a 
woolen gray spencer above, pinned with a single pin by 
the lapels tight across the neck under the chin, and open 
all below. After surveying us and hearing that our name 
was Edgeworth, she smiled graciously and bid us follow 
her, saying, ^^ Mam an est chez elle^ She led the way 
with the grace of a young lady who has been taught to 
dance, across two ante-chambers, miserable-looking, but 
miserable or not, no house in Paris can be without them. 
The girl or young lady, for we were still in doubt which 
to think her, led us into a small room, in which the can- 
dles were so well screened by a green tin screen that we 
could scarcely distinguish the tall form of a lady in black 
who rose from her arm-chair by the fireside as the door 
opened ; a great puff of smoke came from the huge fire- 
place at the same moment. She came forward, and we 
made our way towards her as well as we could through 
a confusion of tables, chairs and work-baskets, china, 
writing-desks and inkstands, and bird-cages and a harp. 
She did not speak, and as her back was now turned to 
both fire and candle I could not see her face, nor any- 
thing but the outline of her form and her attitude. Her 
form was the remains of a fine form, and her attitude 
that of a woman used to a better drawing-room. I, being 
foremost, and she silent, was compelled to speak to the 



98 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

figure in darkness : '-'- Madame de Genlis nous a fait Phon- 
neur de nous inander qu''elle voulait Men nous permettre 
de lui rendre visile, et de lui offrir nos respects,^'' said I, 
or words to that effect ; to which she replied by taking 
my hand, and saying something in which '•'- charmee'''^ 
was the most intelligible word. Whilst she spoke she 
looked over my shoulder at my father, whose bow, I pre- 
sume, told her he was a gentleman, for she spoke to him 
immediately as if she wished to please, and seated us in 
fauteuils near the fire. I then had a full view of her face 
and figure. She looked like the full-length picture of my 
great-grandmother Edgeworth you may have seen in the 
garret, very thin and melancholy, but her face not so 
handsome as my grandmother's ; dark eyes, long sallow 
cheeks, compressed thin lips, two or three black ringlets 
on a high forehead, a cap that Mrs. Grier might wear — 
altogether an appearance of fallen fortunes, worn-out 
health, and excessive but guarded irritability. To me 
there was nothing of that engaging, captivating manner 
which I had been taught to expect by many even of her 
enemies. She seemed to me to be alive only to literary 
quarrels and jealousies; the muscles of her face as she 
spoke, or my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily 
expressed hatred and anger whenever any not of her 
own party were mentioned. She is now, you know, 
devote acharnie. When I mentioned with some enthu- 
siasm the good Abbe Morellet, who has written so 
courageously in favor of the French exiled nobility and 
their children, she answered in a sharp voice : " Oui, c^est 
un ho7nme de beaucoup d'' esprit, a ce qu''onje crois mime, 
mais ilfaut apprendre quHl n''est pas des NStres.'''' My 
father spoke of Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, and 
explained how he had defended her in the Irish House 
of Commons. Instead of being pleased and touched, 



MADAME DE GENUS. 99 

her mind instantly diverged into an elaborate and artifi- 
cial exculpation of Lady Edward and herself, proving, or 
attempting to prove, that she never knew any of her 
husband's plans ; that she utterly disapproved of them, 
at least of all she suspected of them. 

This defense was quite lost upon us, who never thought 
of attacking; but Madame de Genlis seems to have been 
so much used to be attacked that she has defenses and 
apologies ready prepared, suited to all possible occasions. 
She spoke of Madame de Stael's Delphine with detesta- 
tion; of another new and fashionable novel, Amelie^ 
with abhorrence, and kissed my forehead twice because 
I had not read it; '-^ Vous autres Anglaises, vous ites 
7nodestes f'' Where was Madame de Genhs' sense of 
dehcacy when she penned and published Les Chevaliers 
du eigne ? Forgive, my dear Aunt Mary. You begged 
me to see her with favorable eyes, and I went to see 
her after seeing her Rosiere de Salency^ with the most 
favorable disposition, but I could not like her. There 
was something of malignity in her countenance and 
conversation that repelled love, and of hypocrisy which 
annihilated esteem; and from time to time I saw, or 
thought I saw, through the gloom of her countenance, 
a gleam of coquetry.* But my father judges much 
more favorably of her than I do. She evidently took 
pains to please him, and he says he is sure she is a 
person over whose mind he could gain great ascendancy. 
He thinks her a woman of violent passions, unbridled 
imagination and ill-tempered, but not malevolent; one 
who has been so torn to pieces that she now turns upon 
her enemies, and longs to tear in her turn. He says she 

* A contemporary epigram ran thus : — 

" La Genlis se consume en efforts superflus, 
La vertu n*en veut pas ; le vice n'en veut plus." 



100 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

has certainly great powers of pleasing, though I certainly 
neither saw nor felt them. But you know, my dear 
aunt, that I am not famous for judging sanely of 
strangers on a first visit, and I might be prejudiced or 
mortified by Madame de Genlis assuring me that she 
had never read anything of mine except Belinda^ had 
heard of Practical Education^ and heard it much 
praised, but had never seen it. She has just published 
an additional volume of her Petits Romans^ in which 
there are some beautiful stories ; but you must not 
expect another Mademoiselle de Clermont — one such 
story in an age is as much as one can reasonably expect. 
I had almost forgotten to tell you that the little girl 
who showed us in is a girl whom she is educating. 
'-''Elle m''appelle Maman^ mais elle n'est pas ma Jilley 
The manner in which this little girl spoke to Madame 
de Genlis, and looked at her, appeared to me more in 
her favor than anything else. She certainly spoke to 
her with freedom and fondness, and without any affecta- 
tion. I went to look at what the child was writing. 
She was translating Darwin's Zoonomia, I read some 
of the translation; it was excellent. She was, I think 
she said, ten years old. It is certain that Madame de 
Genlis made the present Duke of Orleans * such an 
excellent mathematician, that when he was, during his 
emigration, in distress for bread, he taught mathematics 
as a professor in one of the German universities. If 
we could see or converse with one of her pupils, and 
hear what they think of her, we should be able to form 
a better judgment than from all that her books and her 
enemies say for or against her. I say her books, not 
her friends and enemies, for I fear she has no friends to 

* Afterwards King Louis Philippe. It was at a Swiss school 
that he taught, not at a German university. 



MADAME DE GENLIS. lOI 

plead for her except her books. I never met any one 
of any party who was her friend. This strikes me with 
real melancholy, to see a woman of the first talents in 
Europe, who had lived and shone in the gay court of 
the gayest nation in the world, now deserted and forlorn, 
living in wretched lodgings, with some of the pictures 
and finery — the wreck of her fortunes — before her 
eyes; without society, without a single friend, admired — 
and despised. She lived literally in spite, not in pity. 
Her cruelty in drawing a profligate character of the 
queen, after her execution, in Les Chevaliers du Cignej 
her taking her pupils at the beginning of the Revolution 
to the revolutionary clubs ; her connection with the late 
Duke of Orleans, and her hypocrisy about it ; her insist- 
ing on being governess to his children when the duchess 
did not wish it, and its being supposed that it was she 
who instigated the duke in all his horrible conduct ; and, 
more than all the rest, her own attacks and apologies, 
have brought her into all this isolated state of reproba- 
tion. And now, my dear aunt, I have told you all I 
know, or have heard or think about her; and perhaps 
I have tired you, but I fancied that it was a subject 
particularly interesting to you ; and if I have been 
mistaken you will, with your usual good nature, forgive 
me and say, " I am sure Maria meant it kindly." 

While at Paris, at the mature age of thirty- 
six, there happened to Miss Edgeworth what 
is said to be the most important episode in a 
woman's life — she fell in love. The object of 
her affections was a M. Edelcrantz, a Swede, 
private secretary to the King, whose strong, 
spirited character and able conversation at- 



I02 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

tracted her greatly. She had not, however, 
reasoned concerning her feelings, and never real- 
ized either how strong they were, or dreamed 
that they would be reciprocated. Knowing 
herself to be plain and, as she deemed, unat- 
tractive, and being no longer young, it did not 
occur to her that any man would wish to marry 
her. While writing a long, chatty letter to 
her aunt one day in December, she was sud- 
denly interrupted by his visit and proposal : — 

Here, my dear aunt, I was interrupted in a manner 
that will surprise you as much as it surprised me, by the 
coming in of Monsieur Edekrantz, a Swedish gentleman, 
whom we have mentioned to you, of superior under- 
standing and mild manners : he came to offer me his 
hand and heart ! ! 

My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his attach- 
ment, for I have seen very little of him, and have not 
had time to form any judgment, except that I think 
nothing could tempt me to leave my own dear friends 
and my own country to live in Sweden. My dear- 
est aunt, I write to you the first moment, as, next to my 
father and mother, no person in the world feels so much 
interest' in all that concerns me. I need not tell you 
that my father, 

** Such in this moment as in all the past," 
is kindness itself — kindness far superior to what I 
deserve, but I am grateful for it. 

A few days later she writes to her cousin : — 

I take it for granted, my dear friend, that you have by 
this time seen a letter I wrote a few days ago to my 



M, EDELCRANTZ. IO3 

aunt. To you, as to her, every thought of my mind is 
open. I persist in refusing to leave my country and 
friends to live at the court of Stockholm. And he 
tells me (of course) that there is nothing he would not 
sacrifice for me except his duty; he has been all his life 
in the service of the King of Sweden, has places under 
him, and is actually employed in collecting information 
for a large political establishment. He thinks himself 
bound in honor to finish what he has begun. He says 
he should not fear the ridicule or blame that would be 
thrown upon him by his countrymen for quitting his 
country at his age, but that he would despise himself if 
he abandoned his duty for any passion. This is all very 
reasonable, but reasonable for him only, not for me, and 
I have never felt anything for him but esteem and 
gratitude. 

Mrs. Edgeworth supplements these letters 
in the unpublished memoir of her stepdaughter, 
which she wrote for her family and nearest 
friends. She says : — 

Even after her return to Edgeworthstown it was long 
before Maria recovered the elasticity of her mind. She 
exerted all her powers of self-command, and turned her 
attention to everything which her father suggested for 
her to write. But Leonora^ which she began imme- 
diately after our return home, was written with the hope 
of pleasing the Chevalier Edelcrantz; it was written in a 
style which he liked, and the idea of what he would think 
of it was, I believe, present to her in every page she 
wrote. She never heard that he had even read it. From 
the time they parted at Paris there was no sort of com- 
munication between them ; and beyond the chance which 



I04 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

brought us sometimes into company with travellers wno 
had been in Sweden, or the casual mention of M. Edel- 
crantz in the newspapers or the scientific journals, we 
never heard more of one who had been of such supreme 
interest to her, as to us all at Paris, and of whom 
Maria continued to have all her life the most romantic 
recollection. 

Miss Edgeworth's self-control was manifested 
at once. In none of her other letters does the 
matter recur ; they are as chatty and lively as 
ever ; but the incident throws much light both 
upon her character and the precepts of repres- 
sion of feelings she loved to inculcate. She 
had not merely preached, but practiced them. 

In January, 1803, Mr. Edgeworth suddenly 
received a peremptory order from the French 
Government to quit Paris in twenty-four hours 
and France in fifteen days. Much amazed, he 
went to Passy, taking Miss Edgeworth with 
him, and quietly awaited the solution of the rid- 
dle. It proved that Bonaparte believed him to 
be brother to the Abbe Edgeworth, the devoted 
friend of Louis XVL, and not till it was 
explained to him that the relationship was more 
distant was Mr. Edgeworth allowed to return. 
The cause for the order, as for its withdrawal, 
was petty. The Edgeworths' visit was, how- 
ever, after all, brought to an abrupt conclusion. 
Rumors of imminent hostilities began to be 



IN FRANCE, 105 

heard, and though the reports circulated were 
most contradictory, Mr. Edgeworth thought it 
wise to be ready for departure. It was decided 
that M. Le Breton, who was well informed about 
Bonaparte's plans, should, at a certain evening 
party, give Mr. Edgeworth a hint, and, as he 
dared neither speak nor write, he was suddenly 
to put on his hat if war were probable. The 
hat was put on, and Mr. Edgeworth and his 
family hurried away from Paris. They were 
but just in time. Mr. Lovell Edgeworth, who 
was on his way from Geneva, and never received 
his father's warning letter, was stopped on his 
journey, made prisoner, and remained among 
the detenus till 18 14. 

After a short stay in London the family went 
to Edinburgh to visit Henry Edgeworth, who 
had shown signs of the family malady. Here 
they spent an agreeable time, seeing the many 
men of learning who in those days made Edin- 
burgh a delightful residence. Warm friendships 
were formed with the Alisons, the Dugald 
Stewarts, and Professor Playfair. 

Returned to Edgeworthstown, Miss Edge- 
worth set to work industriously to prepare for 
the press her Popular Tales, and write Leonora 
and several of the Tales of Fashionable Life, 
She exerted all her powers of self-command to- 
throw her energy into her writing, and to follow 



Io6 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

up every suggestion made by her father ; but it 
was clear to those who observed her closely that 
she had not forgotten the man of whom, all her 
life, she retained a tender memory. It was long 
before she thoroughly recovered her elasticity 
of spirits, and the mental struggle did not pass 
over without leaving its mark. Early in 1805 
Miss Edgeworth fell seriously ill with a low, 
nervous fever; it was some while before she 
could leave her room, read, or even speak. As 
she got better she liked to be read to, though 
scarcely able to express her thanks. The first 
day she was really convalescent was destined to 
mark an era in her life. While she was lying 
on the library sofa her sister Charlotte read out 
to her The Lay of the Last Minstrel, then just 
published. It was the beginning of Miss Edge- 
worth's enthusiastic admiration of Scott, which 
resulted in a warm friendship between the two 
authors. 

From the time of the Edgeworths' return 
Ireland had been agitated with the fears of a 
French invasion, and Mr. Edgeworth once more 
exerted himself to establish telegraphic commu- 
nication across the country. As usual, his 
family joined him in his pursuits, and Miss 
Edgeworth, with the rest, was kept employed in 
copying out the vocabularies used in conversa- 
tions. The year 1804 was almost engrossed by 



GRISELDA, 107 

this. Nevertheless she found time to write 
Griselda at odd moments in her own room. 
Her father knew nothing either of the plan of 
the book or of its execution, and she sent it on 
her own account to her publisher, Johnson, with 
the request to print the title-page of a single 
copy without her name, and to send it over to 
Mr. Edgeworth as a new novel just come out. 
Mi'ss Sneyd, who was in the secret, led him to 
peruse it quickly. He read it with surprise and 
admiration, and feeling convinced that Miss 
Edgeworth had not had the actual time to write 
it, and yet seeing it was like her style, he 
fancied his daughter Anna (Mrs. Beddoes) must 
have written it to please him. When at last he 
was told that it was by his favorite daughter, he 
was amused at the trick, and delighted at having 
admired the book without knowing its author. 
This was one of the many little ways in which 
the Edgeworths loved to please one another. 
A happier, more united household it would be 
hard to find among circumstances fraught with 
elements of domestic discord — the children 
and relatives of four wives, of the most diverse 
characters and tastes, living peaceably under 
one roof. Vitality, unwearying activity free 
from restlessness, distinguished most of its 
members, and especially the father and eldest 
daughter. Nor was there anything prim or 



Io8 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

starched in the home atmosphere ; though eth- 
ically severe and maintained at a high level of 
thought, gaiety, laughter and all the lighter 
domestic graces prevailed. Miss Edgeworth's 
letters reflect a cheerful, united home of the 
kind she loves to paint. Like many united 
families, the Edgeworths were strong in a belief 
in their own relations ; they had the clan feeling 
well developed. Not a member went forth from 
the paternal nest but was held in constant 
remembrance, in constant intercourse with 
home, and it was usually Miss Edgeworth's 
ready pen that kept the link well knit. Hence 
the large number of her family letters extant, 
many of which have no separate interest for the 
world, but which, taken as a whole, reflect both 
her own unselfish personality and the busy life 
of young and old around her. In her letters she 
never dwells on troubles ; they overflow with 
spirits, life and hope. As they are apt to be 
long and diffuse, it is not easy to quote from 
them ; but every one presents a nature that 
beat in unison with all that is noble and good. 
She was alive to everything around her, full of 
generous sympathies, enthusiastic in her admi- 
ration of all that had been achieved by others. 
Her praises came fresh and warm from a warm 
and eloquent Irish heart. That these utter- 
ances are toned down and tamed in her books, 



AT HOME, 109 

is yet another proof how the need to illustrate 
her father's ulterior aims cramped her in the 
expression of her feelings. His mind, though 
she knew it not, was inferior to hers, and though 
it was in some respects like her own, it yet 
hung heavy on the wings of her fancy. In 
later life she wrote more letters to acquaint- 
ances than at this time. In these years she 
says to a friend who upbraided her for not writ- 
ing of tener : — 

I do not carry on what is called a regular correspond- 
ence with anybody except with one or two of my very 
nearest relations. And it is best to tell you the plain 
truth, that my father particularly dislikes to see me writ- 
ing letters ; therefore I write as few as I possibly can. 

Of herself she speaks least of all, of her writ- 
ings seldom, and when she does, but incident- 
ally. Without certainly intending it, she 
painted herself when she writes of Mrs. Emma 
Granby (^'the modern Griselda") : — 

All her thoughts were intent upon making her friends 
happy. She seemed to live in them more than in herself, 
and from sympathy rose the greatest pleasure and pain 
of her existence. Her sympathy was not of that useless 
kind which is called forth only by the elegant fictitious 
sorrows of a heroine of romance ; hers was ready for all 
the occasions of real life ; nor was it to be easily checked 
by the imperfections of those to whom she could be of 
service. 



no MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

It is one of the most delightful features in 
Miss Edgeworth, that in her the dignity of the 
author is sustained by the moral worth of 
the individual — a combination unhappily not 
common. 

Visits to and from neighbors or friends, more 
or less eminent, visits from nephews and nieces, 
letters from all quarters of the globe, prevented 
the life at Edgeworthstown from ever becom- 
ing stagnant, even if a home so full of young 
people could be devoid of life. Then, too, 
though the Edgeworths kept themselves aloof 
from politics, the course of public affairs did 
not always hold aloof from them, and at various 
times the disturbed state of Ireland caused 
them discomfort and fears. Sorrows and sick- 
ness, too, did not refrain from entering that 
happy home. There were the usual juvenile 
illnesses, there were births, there were sick- 
nesses among the elder branches. In 1807 
Charlotte, the darling of the family, died after 
much suffering, a victim to hereditary con- 
sumption. In 1809 Mr. Edgeworth himself 
was seriously ill, and Henry's health, too, 
became so precarious that it was needful to 
send him to Madeira. For a long time . it 
seemed likely that Miss Edgeworth would go 
out to nurse him, but the project fell to the 
ground; and a few years later this brother, 



AT HOME, III 

her especial nursling, also died of pulmonary 
disease. 

The sorrow for Charlotte's death cast a cloud 
over all the year 1807. During its course Miss 
Edgeworth's greatest pleasure was the planting 
of a new garden her father had laid out for her 
near her own room, that had been enlarged 
and altered, together with some alterations to 
the main building. She was at all times an 
enthusiastic gardener, finding pleasure and 
health in the pursuit. "My garden adds very 
much to my happiness, especially as Honora 
and all the children have shares in it.'' Then, 
too. Miss Edgeworth was kept constantly 
employed attending to the affairs of the 
tenants ; no rapid, easy or routine task in Ire- 
land. Thus she writes on one occasion : — 

This being May day, one of the wettest I have ever 
seen, I have been regaled, not with garlands of May 
flowers, but with the legal pleasures of the season. I 
have heard nothing but giving notices to quit, taking 
possession, ejectments, flittings, etc. What do you 
think of a tenant who took one of the nice new houses 
in this town, and left it with every lock torn off the 
doors, and with a large stone, such as John Langan* 
could not lift, driven actually through the boarded floor 
of the parlor 1 The brute, however, is rich ; and if he 
does not die of whiskey before the law can get its hand 
into his pocket, he will pay for this waste. 

* John Langan was the steward ; in face and figure the pro- 
totype of Thady in Castle Rackrent. 



112 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

No wonder she once sighs, ^^I wish I had 
time to write some more Early Lessons^ or to 
do half the things I wish to do." With the 
calls on her time, domestic, philanthropic and 
social, it is only amazing that she wrote so 
much. Her method of working is described 
by herself in some detail. From its very 
nature it could not fail to induce a certain 
stiffness and over-anxious finish. She says : — 

Whenever I thought of writing anything I always told 
my father my first rough plans ; and always, with the 
instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately 
upon that which would best answer the purpose. 
" Sketch that, and show it to me." The words, from the 
experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with 
hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, 
when I was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on 
it in the sketch; but to this he always objected. *' I 
don't want any of your painting — none of your drapery ! 
I can imagine all that. Let me see the bare skeleton." 

It seemed to me sometimes impossible that he could 
understand the very slight sketches I made; when, 
before I was conscious that I had expressed this doubt 
in my countenance, he always saw it. 

*' Now, my dear little daughter, I know, does not be- 
lieve that I understand her." Then he would, in his 
own words, fill up my sketch, paint the description, or 
represent the character intended, with such life, that I 
was quite convinced he not only seized the ideas, but 
that he saw with the prophetic eye of taste the utmost 
that could be made of them. After a sketch had his 
approbation, he would not see the filling up till it had 



METHOD OF WORK. II3 

been worked upon for a week or fortnight, or till the first 
thirty or forty pages were written ; then they were read 
to him, and if he thought them going on tolerably well, 
the pleasure in his eyes, the approving sound of his 
voice, even without the praise he so warmly bestowed, 
were sufficient and delightful incitements to " go on and 
finish." When he thought that there was spirit in what 
was written, but that it required, as it often did, great 
correction, he would say : " Leave that to me ; it is my 
business to cut and correct, yours to write on." His 
skill in cutting, his decision in criticism, was peculiarly 
useful to me. His ready invention and infinite resource, 
when I had run myself into difficulties, never failed to 
extricate me at my utmost need. It was the happy 
experience of this, and my consequent reliance on his 
ability, decision and perfect honesty, that relieved me from 
the vacillation and anxiety to which I was so much sub- 
ject, that I am sure I should not have written or finished 
anything without his support. He inspired in my mind 
a degree of hope and confidence, essential in the first 
instance to the full exertion of the mental powers, and 
necessary to insure perseverance in any occupation. 
Such, happily for me, was his power over my mind, 
that no one thing I ever began to write was ever left 
unfinished. 

That such a process was calculated to check 
inspiration is obvious. To suffer one hand to 
chisel and clip the productions of another, to 
insert into a finished frame-work incongruous 
episodes intended to work out a pet idea, was 
as inartistic as it was pernicious. The method 
could not fail to induce a certain self-conscious- 



114 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

ness on the part of the writer fatal to spon- 
taneity, a certain complacent, careful laying 
out of plans, apt to disturb if not to distract the 
reader by drawing his attention from the fabric 
to the machinery. It was this that laid Miss 
Edgeworth open to the charge, so often made, 
of a mechanical spirit in her writings. For our 
own part, after reading her letters, with which 
her father certainly did not meddle, we are 
inclined to lay most of her faults to the charge 
of the monitor and guide whose assistance she 
so much over-rated. He, on the other hand, 
saw other dangers in their system. Writing 
to Mrs. Inchbald, he says : — 

Maria has one great disadvantage in this house — 
she has eight or nine auditors who are no contemptible 
judges of literature, to whom she reads whatever she 
intends to publish. Now, she reads and acts so admir- 
ably well, that she can make what is really dull appear 
to be lively. 

Indeed, everything was done in public in 
that family. All Miss Edgeworth' s works were 
written in the common sitting-room, with the 
noise of playing children about her. Her early 
habits of abstraction stood her in good stead, 
and, at her little table by the fire, she would 
sit for half an hour together, without stirring, 
with her pen in her hand, or else scribble 



METHOD OF WORK. I15 

away very fast in the neat writing that 
never altered to the end. A certain occasional 
want of closeness in her reasoning may per- 
haps, however, have resulted from this habit of 
writing in public, since the effort of abstraction 
made by the brain must of necessity absorb 
some of its power. Considering how large was 
the family continually around her, it is suffi- 
ciently astonishing that she could do it at all. 
Once when such surprise was expressed, Mrs, 
Edgeworth said : "Maria was always the same; 
her mind was so rightly balanced, everything 
was so honestly weighed, that she suffered 
no inconvenience from what would disturb or 
distract any ordinary writer/' 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FASHIONABLE AND POPULAR TALES. 

When the literary history of the nineteenth 
century is written, its historians will be amazed 
to find how important a part the contributions 
of women have played therein. At the meet- 
ing-point of the two centuries it was Miss Edge- 
worth in Ireland, Miss Austen in England, and 
Miss Ferrier in Scotland, who for Great Britain 
inaugurated an era of femalfe authorship that 
stood and sought to stand simply upon its own 
merits, neither striving to be masculine nor ad- 
dressing itself exclusively to women. Fielding, 
Smollett and the older novelists were not solic- 
itous about virtue. They wrote for men read- 
ers only, and if they amused, their end was 
attained. But when women became readers a 
new need arose, and with the need came a new 
supply. The finer ethical instincts of women 
were revolted by the grossness of the Tom 
Joneses, the Tristram Shandys of literature ; and 
as society became purer, manners less coarse, 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 11/ 

men too asked for mental food that should be 
less gross in texture. Miss Burney had led the 
way to a new era, a new style, both in fictitious 
literature and in female authorship. It was in 
her footsteps that Miss Edgeworth trod ; but 
while Miss Burney aimed at amusement only, 
Miss Edgeworth inaugurated the novel with a 
purpose. 

Perhaps no phrase has been more misunder- 
stood than this of ^^a novel with a purpose.'' 

Obviously it is not only right but imperative 
that a novel, or any work of art, should have a 
leading idea, an aim ; but this is markedly differ- 
ent from a didactic purpose, which is implied 
by the phrase. Readers of novels demand 
before all else to be entertained, and are justi- 
fied in that demand, and they merely submit to 
such instruction or moralizing as can be poured 
into their minds without giving them too much 
trouble. Miss Edgeworth lost sight of this too 
often ; indeed, it was a point of view that did 
not enter into her philosophy, narrowed as her 
experience was by the boundaries of home and 
the all-pervading influence of her father's pas- 
sion for the didactic. The omission proved the 
stumbling-block that hindered her novels from 
attaining the highest excellence. A moral was 
ever uppermost in Miss Edgeworth's mind, and 
for its sake she often strained truth and sacri- 



Il8 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

ficed tenderness. She was forever weighted by 
her purpose ; hence her imagination, her talents, 
had not free play, and hence the tendency in 
all her writings to make things take a more 
definite course than they do in real life, where 
purpose and results are not always immediately 
in harmony, nor indeed always evident. Miss 
Kavanagh has aptly said, *^ Life is more mys- 
terious than Miss Edgeworth has made it.'' 
Having said this, however, we have laid our 
finger upon the weak point of her novels, in 
which there is so much to praise, such marked 
ability, such delicious humor, such exuberant 
creative fancy and variety, that the general 
public does very ill to have allowed them to sink 
so much into oblivion. 

Between the years 1804 and 181 3 Miss Edge- 
worth published Leonora^ Griselda, and the sto- 
ries of various length that were issued under 
the collective titles of Tales from Fashionable 
Life and Popular Tales, Leonora was the first 
work she wrote after her return from France, 
where she had enlarged the sphere of her mind 
and heart. It is a marked improvement upon 
Belinda^ the fable is better contrived, the lan- 
guage flows more easily. It was penned with a 
view to please M. Edelcrantz, and in respect of 
being written for one special reader, Leonora 
recalls that curious work by Madame Ricco- 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 1 19 

boni, Lettres de Fanni Butlerd a Milord Charles 
Alfredy published as a fiction, but in reality 
only the collection of the writer's love-letters to 
the Englishman who had wronged and deserted 
her. ''Mistris Fanni to one reader," was the 
significant heading to the preface of that book. 
Miss Edgeworth's purpose in Leonora cer- 
tainly led her into an entirely new path. To 
use her own words, no one would have believed 
that she could have been such an expert in the 
language of sentimental logic. For her doubly 
romantic purpose she was able to argue with 
all the sophistry and casuistry, of false, artifi- 
cial and exaggerated feeling that can make 
vices assume the air of virtues, and virtues 
those of vices, until it is impossible even to 
know them asunder. The story itself rests 
upon a narrow and not very probable founda- 
tion. Its great fault is that it is too long 
drawn out for its base. The principal charac- 
ters are a virtuous, outwardly cold and precise, 
inwardly warm-hearted English wife, and a 
well-bred English husband, led ,^ astray by the 
machinations of a Frenchified coquette who 
sets upon him from pure desoeuvrement^ and 
for whom any other person who had come into 
her path at that moment would have been 
equally acceptable game. The work is thrown 
into the form of letters, which gives to Miss 



I20 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

Edgeworth an opportunity, inimitably carried 
out, of making all the personages paint them- 
selves and speali in the language that is most 
natural to them. These letters are excellently 
varied. Lady Olivia's teem with French and 
German sentiment and metaphysics of self- 
deception ; Leonora's are as candid and gener- 
ous as herself — yet though her motives are 
lofty, we discern a certain air of aristocratic 
hauteur ; while the good sense in General 

B 's is bluntly expressed. 

The fault of the story is that the husband's 
conversion ought to have been brought about 
by purely moral means, and not by the acci- 
dental interception of his false mistress' letters. 
Thus the value of the whole moral is destroyed 
by its creator. That Delphine in a manner sug- 
gested this story, that but for this romance 
Leonora might not have assumed its peculiar 
shape, may be taken almost for granted. A 
certain notion of refuting this corrupt story, 
then at the high tide of its popularity, may also 
have been present in Miss Edgeworth's mind, 
who at no time was so much self-absorbed as 
to lose sight of the ultimate aim in all her writ- 
ings. Those were the days of excessive sensi- 
bility, when to yearn after elective affinities 
was the fashion. From such a state of feeling 
Miss Edgeworth's temperament and training 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 121 

secured her, and for very fear of it she erred 
in an opposite extreme. But with the true 
artist's instinct she recognized that it was in 
the air, and she makes it the theme of a 
romance that holds it up not only to ridicule, 
but shows with relentless force into what 
abysms it may lead its votaries. Over this 
novel Miss Edgeworth expended much time 
and care ; it was subjected to frequent revision, 
while her father *^cut, scrawled and interlined 
without mercy.'' It is certainly polished ad 
unguem^ as he rightly deemed that a book of 
this nature, devoid of regular story, must be ; 
but it might have been cut down still more 
with advantage. 

It is the peculiarity of Miss Edgeworth's 
novels, and may be accepted as their key-note, 
that she systematically addressed herself to the 
understanding rather than to the heart of her 
readers, and that she rarely forgot her educa- 
tional aim. After having striven to instruct 
children and young men and women, she tried, 
in a series of tales selected from fashionable 
life, '^ to point out some of the errors to which 
the higher classes of society are disposed." It 
is an open question whether it is possible to 
correct society, or whether that is a hopeless 
task because society is too vain and silly to 
listen to words of wisdom. " England," said 



122 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Mr. Pecksniff, ** England expects every man to 
do his duty. England will be disappointed/' 
Miss Edgeworth, however, who never doubted 
the value of tuition, attempted the task, and 
she was certainly right in so far that if it were 
possible to open the eyes of this class of per- 
sons, it would be by means of entertaining 
stories. Of course she only appealed to those 
who, though not gifted with enough good sense 
to go right of their own accord, are yet not 
past teaching, or too devoid of sense to be 
teachable, and she took immense pains to show 
how the greater part of our troubles in life arise 
from ignorance rather than from vice and inca- 
pacity. To teach the art of living, the science 
of being happy, is her one endeavor ; and thus 
her fancy, her wit, her strictures, are all made 
to bend to her main purpose, that of being the 
vehicles of her practical philosophy. Yet to 
regard Miss Edgeworth as a mere teaching 
machine is to do her gross injustice. Like 
most people, she was better than her creed. 
Despite her doctrines, her genius was too 
strong for her, and it is thanks to this that 
sundry of these tales from Fashionable Life are 
among her highest and most successful efforts. 
They are also as a whole more powerful and 
varied than any of her previous productions. 
The first series consisted of four stories : 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 1 23 

Ennui J The Dun^ Manceuvring, and Almeria^ 
of which the first is by far the longest. As is 
too often the case with Miss Edgeworth, the 
plot is clumsily and coldly contrived, the pro- 
portions not well maintained ; but the work 
abounds with masterly delineations of charac- 
ter, and is a striking picture of the satiety 
induced by being born, like the hero, Lord 
Glenthorne, on the pinnacle of fortune, so that 
he has nothing to do but to sit still and enjoy 
the barrenness of the prospect, or to eat toffee, 
like the duke in Patience. He tries all amuse- 
ments, but finds them wanting, and he would 
probably have been ruined mentally and bodily 
if a convenient catastrophe had not precipitated 
him temporarily into indigence and aroused all 
those better qualities of his nature and excel- 
lent abilities that lay buried and inert. It is. 
not the least skillful part of this clever tale 
that it is told as an autobiography, the hero 
himself both consciously and unconsciously 
dissecting his foibles. Much of the scene is 
laid in Ireland, and gives Miss Edgeworth 
scope for those amusing collateral incidents, 
those racy delineations of the various classes 
of Irish society, in which she is still unsur- 
passed. She knew how to hit off to the life 
the several peculiarities of respective stations 
and characters, and we know not whom most 



124 MARIA EDG^WORTH, 

to admire and delight in : the Irish pauper who 
officiates as postilion, and who assures Lord 
Glenthorne that his crazy chaise is the best in 
the country — ^*we have two more, to be 
sure, but one has no top and the other no 
bottom ; " the warm-hearted, impulsive, happy- * 
go-lucky Irish nurse, who has no scruple about 
committing a crime for the sake of those she 
loves ; or Lady Geraldine, the high-born, high- 
bred Irish peeress, who speaks with an Irish 
accent, uses Irish idioms, and whose language 
is more interrogative, more exclamatory, more 
rhetorical, accompanied with more animation 
of countenance and demonstrative gesture, than 
that of the English ladies with whom she is 
contrasted. With inimitable skill we are made 
to see that there is something foreign in this 
lady^s manner, something rather French than 
English, and yet not French either, but indig- 
enous. Of course, rebels play a part in the 
story — it would not be a true Irish story 
without them, but, as usual. Miss Edgeworth 
dwells by preference upon the milder, more 
engaging aspects of the Irish character, upon 
their strange, pathetic life ; and while not 
ignoring, brings into as little prominence as 
may be the frequent perjuries, the vindictive 
passions, the midnight butcheries, the lawless 
ferocity, the treacherous cruelty, of her half- 
savage compatriots. 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 1 25 

The Dun is a short tale in Miss Edgeworth's 
most didactic and least happy style, dealing 
with a theme that should be more often 
emphasized and brought into view ; namely, 
the unfeeling thoughtlessness of the rich, that 
withholds from the poor the result of their 
earnings, one of the most frequent and serious 
injuries perpetrated by the wealthy upon their 
indigent brethren. 

Manoeuvringx^ a detailed account of the mach- 
inations of a certain Mrs. Beaumont, a country 
lady, who expends a great deal of Machiavel- 
ism, left-handed wisdom and intrigue upon the 
projects of her children's marriages, and also 
upon securing to her family the fortune of an 
old gentleman who never had a thought of dis- 
posing of it otherwise. The mortification and 
defeats to which her circuitous policy constantly 
exposes her constitute the plot and the moral 
of the tale, which is not ill-conceived, and yet 
for some cause fails to interest us long. 

In Almeriay Miss Edgeworth's admirable 
story-telling powers, her grace and shrewdness, 
are once more seen at their very best. It is 
the history of a woman who has sacrificed all 
the happiness of life, all the better instincts of 
her nature, for the empty ambition of being 
admitted into the charmed circle of fashionable 
society ; and who, though she finds out in time 



126 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

that it is Dead Sea apples she has sought, has 
become so immeshed that she cannot break 
away, but leads an existence of pleasure-hunt- 
ing, ever seeking, never finding that commodity, 
a warning example of 

How the world its veterans rewards — 
A youth of folly, an old age of cards. 

The moral is not insisted on, but is allowed to 
speak for itself, and is on that account far more 
eloquent. 

Except when dealing with Irish scenes. Miss 
Edgeworth is never happier than when painting 
the perverse or intriguing fine ladies of society, 
who, having no real troubles or anxieties to 
occupy, them, shielded from the physical evils 
of existence, make to themselves others, and 
find occupation for their empty heads and 
hours, with results put before us so simply, 
and devoid of euphemism, by Dr. Watts. Well 
indeed has the proverb said, "Aft empty mind 
is the devil's house." In her kindly way Miss 
Edgeworth can be scathing, and she exercises 
this power upon women of mere fashion. The 
ladies of the period were less occupied with 
public and philanthropic schemes than they 
are now, and hence had more time to expend 
on follies and frivolities. The whole pitiful 
system of unreal existence led by these women 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 12/ 

is exposed with an almost remorseless hand, 
for Miss Edgeworth had no tenderness for 
foolish failings. Inimitably, too, we are made 
to see how then, as now, there was tolerated in 
fashionable society a degree of vulgarity which 
would neither be suffered nor attempted in 
lower life. It was just because Miss Edge- 
worth's lines were cast among the rich and idle 
that she was able to understand all the misery 
and heartlessness of the lives of a large section 
of this community. We see how their petty 
cravings, their preposterous pursuits, bring pos- 
itive misery on themselves if not on others ; 
how their dispositions are sophisticated, their 
tempers warped, their time and talents wasted, 
in their restless chase after social distinction, 
after the craze of being in the fashion. "The 
scourges of the prosperous ;'' thus happily have 
these giant curses of mere fashionable life been 
defined. Miss Edgeworth certainly understood 
fully the nature of the disorder of her patients, 
the ennui^ the stagnation of life and feeling 
that devoured them and sunk many of them at 
last to a depth at which they no longer merited 
the name of rational human beings. At the 
same time (and this is a point which must be 
insisted upon) there is no sourness about Miss 
Edgeworth' s pictures of good society ; her pen, 
in speaking of it, is not dipped in vinegar and 



128 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

wormwood, as was the pen of Thackeray, and 
sometimes even that of George Eliot. With- 
out snobbishness, without envy, she writes 
quite simply, and absolutely objectively, of that 
which surged around her whenever she left the 
quiet of Edgeworthstown and visited in some 
of the many noble houses of Ireland, Scotland 
and England, in which she was a familiar 
friend. That her pictures of contemporary 
society were correct has never been disputed. 
She reproduced faithfully not only its coarser 
and silly side, but also the more brilliant con- 
versational features, that make it contrast so 
favorably with that of our own day, in which 
the art of talking has been lost. Lord Jeffrey, 
an authority, and one not given to flattery, says 
that Miss Edgeworth need not be afraid of 
being excelled in *^that faithful but flattering 
representation of the spoken language of per- 
sons of wit and politeness — in that light and 
graceful tone of raillery and argument, and in 
that gift of sportive but cutting medisance 
which is sure of success in those circles where 
success is supposed to be most difficult and 
desirable.'' In support of his statement he 
points to the conversation of Lady Delacour 
{Belinda), Lady Dashfort (Absentee) and Lady 
Geraldine {Ennui). 

The first series of Tales from Fashionable 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 129 

Life met with so much favor that the publisher 
clamored for more. Some were lying ready, 
others had to be written, but in 18 12 Miss 
Edgeworth was able to issue a second series, 
containing three stories, of which one, The 
Absentee^ ranks worthily beside Castle Rackrent 
as a masterpiece. The evils this story sought 
to expose came daily under Miss Edgeworth's 
observation ; she beheld the Irish landed gentry 
forsake their homes and their duties in order to 
go to London and cut a figure in fashionable 
society, spending beyond their means, oblivious 
of the state of home affairs, and merely regard- 
ing their properties as good milch kine. How 
their unfortunate tenants were ground down in 
order to meet these claims they neither knew 
nor cared. Lord and Lady Clonbrony, the 
absentees, are drawn with vivid touches : she is 
devoured by ambition to shine in a society for 
which she is not fitted, and voluntarily submits 
to any humiliations and rebuffs, any sacrifices, 
to attain this end ; he, uprooted from his wonted 
surroundings, cannot acclimatize himself to new 
ones, and, merely to pass his time, sinks into 
the vices of gaming and betting. Lady Clon- 
brony affects a contempt for her native land and 
pretends she is not Irish. As, however, she 
cannot rid herself of an Irish pronunciation and 
Irish phrases, she is constantly placed in the 
5 



I30 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

dilemma of holding her tongue and appearing , 
yet more foolish than she is ; or, by mistaking 
reverse of wrong for right, so caricaturing the 
English pronunciation that thus alone she 
betrayed herself not to be English. In vain, 
too, this lady struggles to school her free, good- 
natured Irish manner into the cold, sober, stiff 
deportment she deems English. The results to 
which all this gives rise are delineated with con- 
summate skill and good-humored satire. The 
scenes that occur in London society are highly 
diverting, but the story gains in deeper interest 
when it shifts to Ireland, whither Lady Clon- 
brony drives her only son, Lord Colambre, 
whom she has sought to marry against his will 
to an English heiress. Unknown to his tenants, 
from whom he has so long been absent, and 
further purposely disguised in order to elicit the 
truth concerning certain unfavorable rumors 
that have reached his ears, Lord Colambre is a 
witness of the oppressions under which his ten- 
ants labor from an unscrupulous and rapacious 
agent, who feels secure in his master's absence, 
and in that master's indifference to all but the 
money result of his estate. Charmingly is the 
Irish character here described ; we see it in its 
best phases, with all its kindliness, wit, gener- 
osity. There are elements of simple pathos 
scattered about this story. With delicate and 



FASHIONABLE TALES. 131 

playful humor we are shown the heroic and 
imaginative side of the Irish peasantry. We 
quite love the kindly old woman who kills her 
last fowl to furnish supper to the stranger, 
whom she does not know to be her landlord. 
On the other hand we are amused beyond meas- 
ure with Mrs. Rafferty, the Dublin grocer's wife 
?indi parvenue, who, in the absence of those who 
should have upheld Irish society, is able to make 
that dash that Lady Clonbrony vainly seeks to 
make in London. Her mixture of taste and 
incongruity, finery and vulgarity, affectation and 
ignorance, is delightful. The dinner-party scene 
at her house would make the reputation of many 
a modern novelist. It was a dinner of profusion 
and pretension, during which Mrs. Rafferty 
toiled in vain to conceal the blunders of her two 
untrained servants, who were expected to do the 
work of five accomplished waiters, talking high 
art meanwhile to her lordly guest, and occasion- 
ally venting her ill humor at the servants' blun- 
ders upon her unfortunate husband, calling out 
so loud that all the table could hear, '^ Corny 
Rafferty, Corny Rafferty, you're no more g7^d at 
the/^/ of my table than a stick of celery ! " As 
for the scene in which Lord Colambre discovers 
himself to his tenantry and to their oppressor, 
Macaulay has ventured to pronounce it the best 
thing written of its kind since the opening of 



132 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

the twenty-second book of the Odyssey. No 
mean authority and no mean praise! As a 
story it is certainly one of the best contrived, 
and the end is particularly happy. Instead of a 
tedious moral there is a racy letter from the 
post-boy who drove Lord Colambre, and who 
paints, with true Hibernian vivacity and some 
delicious malaprops, the ultimate return of the 
Clonbrony family to their estate, which, to the 
optimistic Irish mind, represents the end of all 
their troubles and the inauguration of a new era 
of prosperity and justice. For one thing, it is 
so much more in keeping that an uncultured 
peasant, rather than a thoughtful and philosoph- 
ical mind, should believe in so simple a solution 
to evils of long standing ; that what we should 
have felt an error in Miss Edgeworth becomes 
right and natural in Larry. The suggestion for 
this conclusion came from Mr. Edgeworth, and 
he wrote a letter for the purpose. Miss Edge- 
worth, however, wrote one too, and her father 
so much preferred hers that it was chosen to 
form the admirable finale to the Absentee. 

What perfect self-control Miss Edgeworth 
possessed may be judged from the fact that the 
whole of the Absentee, so full of wit and spirit, 
was written in great part while she was suffer- 
ing agonies from toothache. Only by keeping 
her mouth full of some strong lotion could she 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 1 33 

in any way allay the pain, yet her family state 
that never did she write with more rapidity and 
ease. Her even-handed justice, her stern love 
of truth, are markedly shown in this novel. 
She does not exaggerate for the sake of strength- 
ening her effects ; thus, for example, she does 
not make all her agents bad, as some writers 
would have done ; indeed, one is a very model 
middle-man. She is always far more careful to be 
true than to be effective, she uses the sober col- 
ors of reality, she paints with no tints warmer 
than life. The chief and abiding merit of her 
Irish scenes is not that of describing what had 
not been described before, but of describing well 
what had been described ill. 

Vivian was written with extreme care and 
by no means with the same rapidity, yet it can- 
not be compared to the Absentee, Here Miss 
Edgeworth was once more clogged by her 
purpose and unable for a moment to lose sight 
of it. ''\ have put my head and shoulders to 
the business,'' she writes to her cousin, *'and 
if I don't make a good story of it, it shall not 
be for want of pains." It proved no easy task, 
and only the fact that her father so much 
approved it, upheld her. ''My father says 
Vivian will stand next to Mrs, Beattmont and 
Ennui, I have ten days' more work on it, and 
then huzza ! ten days' more purgatory at other 



134 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

corrections, and then a heaven upon earth of 
idleness and reading, which is my idleness/' 
Vivian is a particularly aggravating story, so 
excellent that it is hard to comprehend why 
it is not of that first-class merit which it just 
seems to miss. Its aim is to illustrate the 
evils and perplexities that arise from vacillation 
and infirmity of purpose, and it is rather a 
series of incidents than one well-rounded plot. 
Miss Edgeworth loves to paint, not an episode 
in life, but the history of a whole life-career. 
This permits her to trace out those gradual 
evolutions of some fault of character in which 
she displays such consummate ability, such 
precision and metaphysical subtlety. The 
hero, Vivian, a man of good disposition, but 
lacking firmness of purpose, cannot say "no,'' 
while at the same time he has all the spirit of 
opposition which seems to go hand in hand 
with weak characters, and is by them mistaken 
for resolution. The faults, the errors, the 
griefs, this trait of character leads him into are 
the staple of the story, which ends mournfully, 
since Vivian's inability to cure himself of his 
fault finally leads to his own death in a duel. 
He has not inaptly been named "a domestic 
Hamlet." Like Hamlet, he is neither able to 
accommodate himself to life as it is, nor strong 
enough to strike out a new life on his own 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 1 35 

account. The tale abounds in clever pictures 
of aristocratic and political society, and is full 
of the intrigues, the petty meannesses of social 
leaders. As usual, the moral instances are 
both striking and amusing, reason and ridicule 
being mixed in those just proportions that 
Miss Edgeworth knew how to blend so happily. 
A serious defect is undoubtedly the fact that 
it is not possible to care for the hero, and 
hence we grow rather indifferent to his good 
or ill fortune, and after a while are weary of 
the undoubted skill and perverted ingenuity 
with which he apologizes for his vacillation. 
On the other hand, as ever with Miss Edge- 
worth, the subordinate characters are through- 
out excellent, drawn with force and life-like 
power. Lord Glistonbury alone would redeem 
the book from the possibility of being dull. 
This talkative, conceited man, of neither prin- 
ciple nor understanding, who chatters adopted 
opinions and original nonsense, who loves to 
hear himself speak, and believes he is uttering 
great things, is a distinct creation. 

The story of Madame de Fleury is slight in 
texture. It relates the experience of a rich 
and benevolent French lady who conducts a 
school for poor children after the Edgeworth 
type, and is rather a transcript from real life 
than a tale. Formal and conventional though 



136 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

it is, however, it was never wholly possible to 
Miss Edgeworth to belie her genius. Invaria- 
bly she introduces some character, trait or 
observation that redeems, even a dull tale from 
condemnation. In this case it is the delicate 
skill with which is depicted the gradual decline 
in character of Manon, who from an uncon- 
scientious child becomes a bold, unscrupulous 
woman. It was in penning Madame de Fleury 
that Miss Edgeworth encountered the difficulty 
she had observed of making truth and fiction 
mix well together. Emilie de Coulanges is the 
too correctly virtuous and rather colorless 
daughter of a refugee French countess, whose 
provoking character is deftly depicted with its 
selfishness, its self-absorption, that renders her 
both ungrateful and regardless of the comfort 
of the English lady who has most generously 
entertained her at no little personal inconven- 
ience. Unfortunately an irritable temper mars 
Mrs. Somers' good, generous nature, and causes 
her to weary out even the affections of those 
who have most cause to love her. It also ren- 
ders her suspicious of the probity, the good 
intentions of her friends. She loves to arouse 
sentimental quarrels ; the bickerings and ulti- 
mate reconciliation give her real pleasure, as a 
form of mental titillation, and she fails to see 
that, though with her it is all surface, as her 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 1 37 

real feelings are not aroused, this may not be 
the case with her victims. Mrs. Somers, who 
may rank as the true heroine, is a bold yet 
highly-finished portrait, conceived and executed 
in Miss Edgeworth's best manner. The count- 
ess is little less happy. Miss Edgeworth pos- 
sessed in a high degree that intuitive judgment 
of character which is more common in women 
than in men, and which, when properly exer- 
cised, balanced by judgment and matured by 
experience, explains the success they have met 
with in the domain of fictitious literature. 

Again and again Miss Edgeworth proved the 
fecund creativeness with which she could delin- 
eate the moral and intellectual anatomy of the 
most varied and various characters. Her per- 
sonages are animate with life and brightness. 
Above all else she was an artist in detail, and 
never more felicitous than when furnishing 
studies of foible in female form. Of this the 
Modem Griselda is a notable instance — a bril- 
liant performance, almost too brilliant, for it 
scintillates with wit and epigrammatic wisdom ; 
it never fails or flags for one little moment, so 
that at last the reader's attention is in danger 
of being surfeited by a feast of good things. 
The fable is the direct opposite to that of the 
old story of Griselda. In the words of Milton 
we are shown how it befalls the man 



138 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Who to worth in woman over-trusting, 
Lets her will rule : restraint she will not brook ; 
And left to herself, if evil thence ensue. 
She first his weak indulgence will accuse. 

This the modern Griselda does to her hus- 
band's cost and her own. The story is a 
remarkable evidence of Miss Edgeworth's inde- 
pendence of genius. She showed no weak sym- 
pathy with the failings of her sex just because 
it was her sex, but, like a true friend, held them 
up to view and pointed them out for correction. 
Her objectiveness did not insure her, however, 
from misconstruction. Mrs. Barbauld wrote 
to her : — 

I became very impatient for your Griselda before 
Johnson thought proper to produce it ; need I add we 
have read it with great pleasure 1 It is charming, like 
everything you write, but I can tell you the gentlemen 
like it better than the ladies, and if you were to be tried 
by a jury of your own sex I do not know what punish- 
ment you might be sentenced to for having betrayed their 
cause. " The author is one of your own sex ; we men 
have nothing to do but to stand by and laugh," was the 
remark of a gentleman, no less candid a man than Dr. 
Aiken : and then the moral (a general moral if I under- 
stand it right) that a man must not indulge his wife too 
much ! If I were a new-married woman I do not know 
whether I would forgive you till you had made the 
amende honorable by writing something to expose the 
men. All, however, are unanimous in admiring the 
sprightliness of the dialogue and the ingenious and 
varied perverseness of the heroine. 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 1 39 

To this letter Miss Edgeworth replied : — 

Let me assure you that the little tale was written in 
playfulness, not bitterness of heart. Not one of the 
female committee who sat upon it every day whilst it was 
writing and reading ever imagined that it should be 
thought a severe libel upon the sex, perhaps because 
their attention was fixed upon Mrs. Granby, who at least 
is as much a panegyric as Mrs. Bolingbroke is a satire 
upon the sex. 

Popular Tales were issued, and also in great 
part written, before the two series of Fashion- 
able TaleSy and, taken as a whole, do not 
approach them in merit. They are more crude 
in conception, more didactic in manner; the 
moral is too obviously thrust into view, and at 
times even the very philosophy the author 
strives to inculcate is halting. The intensity 
and severe restraint of her purpose had blinded 
her vision, perverted her logic ; and thus the 
value of some of these ingenious apologues is 
lowered. There is a character of childishness 
and poorness about many of these tales that 
detracts seriously from the really accurate 
observation and acute knowledge of human 
nature that they inclose. Further, too, there 
is always such a sober, practical, authentic air 
about all Miss Edgeworth's narratives, that 
glaring inconsistencies and forced catastrophes 
strike us with double force as ludicrous and 



I40 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

unnatural when introduced by her. We cer- 
tainly incline to think that the result of perus- 
ing at one sitting the two volumes of Miss 
Edgeworth's Popular Tales could lead to that 
outburst of Pharisaical pride : — 

Said I then to my heart, " Here's a lesson for me ! 

That man's but a picture of what I might be ; 

But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding, 

Who have taught me, betimes, to love working and reading." 

Popular Tales were devised with a view to 
correct the errors and temptations of middle- 
class life, and were intended for a class which 
in those days was not much in the habit of 
reading. 

Mr. and Miss Edgeworth, though advanced 
and liberal thinkers in many ways, were con- 
servative in others, and, curiously enough, car- 
ried the idea of class distinction into the domain 
of reading. They deemed that to reach the 
middle classes a different character of story 
must be conceived from that destined for per- 
sons of rank. There is a naivete, a gentle 
absurdity, about this simple fancy that we can- 
not help attributing to Mr. Edgeworth's unim- 
aginative mind. In a brief but bombastic pref- 
ace this worthy personage sets forth the 
pretension of the writer of these stories, and 
gives a list of the classes for which they are 
adapted. Why did he not also devise some 



FASHIONABLE TALES, 141 

method by which to insure that none of the 
tales should be read or bought save by persons 
of a certain social standard ? It would have 
been equally reasonable. To make a distinc- 
tion between tales for children and for adults 
is proper and right ; to draw a fine distinction 
between classes, unfit and childish. The pro- 
cess of natural selection will of its own accord 
effect the result that no one will read that 
which is tedious. Yet even when hampered 
by the illustration of copy-book morality, Miss 
Edgeworth could not hide her power. She 
never repeats herself ; every story is unlike the 
other. She does not angrily apply herself to 
the correction of the vices and abuses she 
holds peculiar to the class she addresses ; 
neither does she magnify, even though she 
emphasizes. We only behold them shorn of 
the indulgences and palliations they too often 
meet with. She was neither a Utopian purist 
nor a sentimental innocent ; nor can she belie 
a natural tendency to make her ethics rather a 
code of high-minded expediency than of high 
principle for its own sake only. Throughout 
her writings she shows that from low as well as 
high motives, good actions are the best ; but 
she never suffers her characters to rest in the 
reward of a quiet conscience. Her supreme 
good sense was always mingled with a regard 



142 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

for the social proprieties ; she never loses these 
quite from sight ; her idea of right is as much 
to preserve these as for right itself. For, after 
all, Miss Edgeworth's life revolved amid the 
fashionable world, and lofty as her aims are, 
she was not wholly untainted by her surround- 
ings. She accounts it no crime in her heroines 
if they look out for a good establishment, 
money, horses, carriages ; provided always that 
the man they marry be no dunce, she will over- 
look any little lack of affection. But, after all, 
she was teaching only in accordance with the 
superficial philosophy of the last century, which 
led people to found their doctrines entirely upon 
self-interest. 

Still, a tone of rationality and good sense was 
so new in the tales of Miss Edgeworth's period, 
that to this alone a large share of the un- 
doubted success and popularity of the Popular 
Tales may be ascribed. Lord Jeffrey, criticis- 
ing them at the time of their appearance, 
remarked that ^4t required almost the same 
courage to get rid of the jargon of fashionable 
life, and the swarms of peers, foundlings and 
seducers, as it did to sweep away the mytho- 
logical persons of antiquity and to introduce 
characters who spoke and acted like those who 
were to peruse these adventures.'' Miss Edge- 
worth was certainly the first woman to make 



FASHIONABLE TALES. 143 

domestic fiction the vehicle of great and neces- 
sary truths, and on this account alone she must 
ever take high rank, and be forgiven if that 
which has been said of her in general be 
specially true of Popular Tales, that : *' She 
walks by the side of her characters as Mentor 
by the side of Telemachus, keeping them out 
of all manner of pleasant mischief, and wagging 
the monitory head and waving the remonstrat- 
ing finger, should their breath come thick at 
approaching adventures.'' 



CHAPTER IX. 

VISIT TO LONDON. MR. EDGEWORTh's DEATH. 

Busily, happily, uneventfully time flowed on 
at Edgeworthstown, while abroad Miss Edge- 
worth's fame was steadily on the increase. 
But whatever the world might say, however 
kind, nay flattering, its verdict, this preemi- 
nently sensible woman did not suffer herself 
to be deluded by success. That she knew 
precisely and gauged correctly the extent and 
limits of her power, is proved by a letter 
written to Mr. Elton Hammond, who had over- 
zealously defended her from criticism: — 

I thank you for your friendly zeal in defense of 
my powers of pathos and sublimity, but I think it carries 
you much too far, and you imagine that I refrain from 
principle or virtue from displaying powers which I really 
do not possess. I assure you that I am not in the least 
degree capable of writing a dithyrambic ode, or any 
other kind of ode. Therefore it would be the meanest 
affectation in me to pretend to refrain from such efforts 
of genius. In novel-writing I certainly have from 
principle avoided all exaggerated sentiment; but I am 
well aware that many other writers possess in a much 
higher degree than I do the power of pathos and the 



VISIT TO LONDON. 145 

art of touching the passions. As to how I should use 
these powers if I had them, perhaps I cannot fairly 
judge, but all I am at present sure of is that I will not 
depreciate that which I do not possess. 

Another letter to the same correspondent 
deserves quotation, as giving her views on 
authorship. Mr. Hammond had consulted her 
as to the advisability of his adventuring on 
that career. Miss Edgeworth replied: — 

If everybody were to wait till they could write a book 
in which there should not be a single fault or error, the 
press might stand still for ages yet unborn. Mankind 
must have arrived at the summit of knowledge before 
language could be as perfect as you expect yours to be. 
Till ideas are exact, just and sufficient, how can words 
which represent them be accurate? The advantage of 
the art of printing is that the mistakes of individuals in 
reasoning and writing will be corrected in time by the 
public — so that the cause of truth cannot suffer, and 
I presume you are too much of a philosopher to mind 
the trifling mortification to your vanity which the detec- 
tion of a mistake might occasion. You know that some 
sensible person has observed, only in other words, that 
we are wiser to-day than we were yesterday. ... I 
think that only little or weak minds are so dreadfully 
afraid of being ever in the wrong. Those who feel that 
they have resources, that they have means of compen- 
sating for errors, have never this horror of being found 
in a mistake. 

In the spring of 1813 Mr., Mrs. and Miss 
Edgeworth visited London, where they were 
much lionized. According to contemporaries 



146 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

it was the daughter for whom the attentions 
were mainly meant, though she, of course, 
deemed them intended for her father. Crabb 
Robinson said that Miss Edgeworth gained 
the good will of every one during this visit. 
Not so her father: his *'cock-sureness," dicta- 
torial and dogmatic manner gave much offense 
in society. 

They met every one worth meeting during 
their brief stay, and many famous names glint 
across the pages of the one letter that has 
been preserved treating of this London visit. 
Perhaps it was the only one written, for she 
describes themselves as being, from morning 
till night, in a whirl of gaiety and sight-seeing, 
"that how we got through the day and night 
with our heads on our shoulders is a matter of 
astonishment to me. . . . But I trust we 
have left London without acquiring any taste 
for dissipation or catching the rage for finery 
and fine people." In this one letter there 
are, unfortunately, none of those delightfully 
detailed descriptions of persons and events 
that she gave from France. Among the 
distinguished persons she met. Lord Byron is 
mentioned. Singularly enough she dismisses 
him with just the last remark that one would 
have expected concerning the poet, about 
whose good looks, at least, the world was 



VISIT TO LONDON, 1 47 

unanimous : " Of Lord Byron, I can only tell 
you that his appearance is nothing that you 
would remark/' He, on his part, was more 
favorably impressed. He writes in his jour- 
nal: — 

I had been the lion of 181 2. Miss Edgeworth and 
Mme. de Stael with The Cossack^ towards the end of 
1 81 3, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year. 
I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety, 
elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk and restless. 
He was seventy, but did not look fifty, no, nor forty-eight 
even. I had seen poor Fitz-Patrick not very long before 
— a man of pleasure, wit and eloquence, all things. He 
tottered, but still talked like a gentleman, though feebly ; 
Edgeworth bounced about and talked loud and long; 
but he seemed neither weakly nor decrepit, and hardly 
old. 

Byron then remarks that he heard Mr. Edge- 
worth boast of having put down Dr. Parr, a 
boast which Byron took leave to think not true. 
He adds : — 

For the rest, he seemed intelligent, vehement, viva- 
cious and full of life. He bids fair for a hundred years. 
He was not much admired in London, and I remember 
a "ryghte merrie " and conceited jest which was rife 
among the gallants of the day, viz. : a paper had been 
presented for the recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage, to 
which all men had been called to subscribe ; whereupon 
Thomas Moore, of profane and poetical memory, did 
propose that a similar paper should be j-^^scribed and 
circums^Qxih^di for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland. 



148 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

The fact was, everybody cared more about her. She 
was a nice little unassuming "Jeanie Deans" looking 
body, as we Scotch say, and if not handsome, certainly 
not ill-looking. Her conversation was as quiet as her- 
self. One would never have guessed she could write her 
name; whereas her father talked, not as if he could write 
nothing else, but as if nothing else was worth writing. 

To turn from them to their works, I admire them; but 
they excite no feeling and they leave no love, except for 
some Irish steward or postilion. However, the impres- 
sion of intellect and prudence is profound, and may be 
useful. 

To the Edgeworths' regret they left London 
before the arrival of Madame de Stael, for 
whom all the world was eagerly looking. The 
poet Rogers, noted for malicious sayings, as- 
serted at a dinner-party that this was not acci- 
dent, but design ; that Madame de Stael would 
not arrive till Miss Edgeworth had gone. *' Mad- 
ame de Stael would not like two stars shining at 
the same time.'' Fortunately, for once, he was 
reproved ; for it happened that, unknown to 
him, Madame de Stael's son was of the com- 
pany, who indignantly repelled the insinuation 
that bis mother could be capable of such 
meanness. 

As always. Miss Edgeworth was glad to get 
home again : — 

The brilliant panorama of London is over, and I have 
enjoyed more pleasure and have had more amusement, 



VISIT TO LONDON. 149 

infinitely more than I expected, and received more atten- 
tion, more kindness, than I could have thought it pos- 
sible would be shown to me ; I have enjoyed the delight 
of seeing my father esteemed and honored by the best 
judges in England ; I have felt the pleasure of seeing my 
true friend and mother — for she has been a mother to 
me — appreciated in the best society; and now, with the 
fullness of content, I return home, loving my own friends 
and my own mode of life preferably to all others, after 
comparison with all that is fine and gay, and rich and 

rare. 

******* 

I feel that I return with fresh pleasure to literary work 

from having been so long idle, and I have a famishing 

appetite for reading. All that we saw in London I am 

sure I enjoyed, while it was passing, as much as possible; 

but I should be sorry to live in that whirling vortex, and 

I find my taste and conviction confirmed on my return to 

my natural friends and my dear home. 

Seeing Patronage through the press, and 
writing the continuations of Franks Rosantondy 
and Harry and Lucy^ were Miss Edgeworth's 
immediate occupations on her return. 

Early in 18 14 Mr. Edgeworth showed the 
first infirmities of age, which resulted in a long 
and painful illness. During its course Miss 
Edgeworth's letters were only bulletins of his 
health. The anxiety the family had so long felt 
concerning Lovell Edgeworth, on whom, on Mr. 
Edgeworth's death, all his duties would devolve, 
and who was still a prisoner, was heightened by 
this event. It was, therefore, an increased joy 



ISO MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

when, upon the entrance of the Allies into Paris, 
' after a forcible detention of eleven years, Lovell 
Edgeworth was at last released and able to has- 
ten home. The pleasure of seeing him helped 
to restore his father's health ; but it was evident 
that Mr. Edgeworth's constitution had received 
a shock, and he himself never swerved from the 
opinion that his existence might be prolonged a 
year, or even two, but that permanent recovery 
was out of all question. This did not depress 
him. As before, he continued to be actively 
employed, interested in all new things, in all the 
life about him, and repeatedly exclaimed, '^ How 
I enjoy my existence ! '' ^^He did not for his 
own sake desire length of life," says his daugh- 
ter, *' but it was his prayer that his mind might 
not decay before his body." He assured his 
friends that as far as this might be allowed to 
depend on his own watchful care over his under- 
standing and his temper, he would preserve 
himself through the trials of sickness and suffer- 
ing to the last, such as they could continue to 
respect and love. This assurance he faithfully 
redeemed, by dint of a self-control and a regard 
for the comfort of others that cannot be too 
much commended, and which of itself alone 
would win pardon for many of his irritating 
faults. 

Waverley had just appeared, and every one 



"WAVERLEY.'' 151 

was reading and discussing it. Scott, who had 
always been an ardent admirer of Miss Edge- 
worth, and who said in after-years that he should 
in all likelihood never have thought of a Scotch 
novel had he not read Maria Edge worth's exqui- 
site pieces of Irish character, had desired his 
publisher to send her a copy on its first appear- 
ance, inscribed, *^From the Author." She had, 
however, not yet received this copy when late 
one night, after having finished hearing the 
story read aloud to her family, in all the first 
fervor of her admiration, she sat down to write 
to the unknown author. Mrs. Edgeworth, who 
had been the reader, relates that as she closed 
the volume Mr. Edgeworth exclaimed, ^' Aut 
Scotus, aut Diabolus^'' and with these words 
Miss Edgeworth began her long and ardently- 
appreciative letter to the nameless novelist. 
All Miss Edgeworth's ready, generous, truly 
Irish enthusiasm breaks forth in this epistle, 
which is too laudatory, too much written a la 
volee to be truly critical. But Miss Edgeworth 
never was critical when her feelings came into 
play, or were allowed their course unchecked. 
She narrates to Scott how the story was read 
aloud, how when ended they all felt depressed 
to think that they must return to the flat reali- 
ties of life, and how little disposed they were to 
read the " Postscript, which should have been a 



152 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Preface." While she was writing her letter 
Mrs. Edgeworth opened the book again and 
noticed this chapter. 

"Well, let us hear it," said my father. Mrs. Edge- 
worth read on. Oh ! my dear sir, how much pleasure 
would my father, my mother, my whole family, as well as 
myself, have lost if we had not read to the last page ! 
And the pleasure came upon us so unexpectedly — we 
had been so completely absorbed, that every thought of 
ourselves, of our own authorship, was far, far away. I 
thank you for the honor you have done us and for the 
pleasure you have given us, great in proportion to the 
opinion we had formed of the work we had just perused, 
and, believe me, every opinion I have in this letter 
expressed was formed before any individual in the family 
had peeped to the end of the book, or knew how much 
we owed you. 

Your obliged and grateful 

Maria Edgeworth. 

To this letter Ballantyne replied ; thus, even 
towards Miss Edgeworth, Scott kept up his 
anonymity. A little later she tells a friend: 
** Scott says upon his honor that he had noth- 
ing to do with Guy Mannering^ though he had 
a little to do, he says, with Waver ley.'' 

The following winter was spent by the family 
at Dublin, for the sake of first-class medical 
advice for Mr. Edgeworth. That indefatigable, 
active-minded old man meantime, though far 



'' patronage:' 153 

from well, made experiments on wheel carriages 
and published a report. There was much 
gaiety and some interesting society to enliven 
the winter, but nothing worthy of note is 
recorded by Miss Edgeworth. Anxiety on 
account of her beloved father was uppermost 
in her mind, yet she continued to write, and 
was busy upon some plays and upon preparing 
a third edition of Patronage, In this third 
edition she made some important alterations, 
changing the dhtouefnent to gratify remon- 
strances that had reached her. She did not 
like this alteration, and doubted the propriety 
of making it after a work had gone through 
two editions. Her father, however, approved, 
and the public was more satisfied. There was 
certainly much that was unnatural in the 
previous course of the tale, in which the 
newly-married wife refuses to go abroad with 
her adored husband, but lets him go alone and 
remains Avith her father, who, it is true, was 
in grief, but who had another daughter to 
console him. This might be Edgeworthian, 
but it was not human nature ; and the incident 
gave universal offense. 

Every new book of value found its way to 
Edgeworthstown, and was eagerly read and 
discussed by the family. Miss Austen was soon 
an established favorite, while Mrs. Inchbald 



154 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

had long been valued. An occasional corre- 
spondence was maintained with her. Writing 
of the Simple Story ^ Miss Edgeworth says: — 

By the force that is necessary to repress feelings we 
judge of the intensity of the feeling, and you always 
contrive to give us by intelligible but simple signs the 
measure of this force. Writers of inferior genius waste 
their words in describing feeling, in making those who 
pretend to be agitated by passion describe the effects 
of that passion and talk of the rending of their hearts^ 
etc. — a gross blunder, as gross as any Irish blunder; 
for the heart cannot feel and describe its own feelings 
at the same moment. It is *' being like a bird in two 
places at oncey . . . Did you really draw the char- 
acters from life, or did you invent them.^* You excel, 
I think, peculiarly, in avoiding what is commonly called 
Jine writing- — a sort of writing which I detest, which 
calls the attention away from the thing to the manner^ 
from the feeling to the language, which sacrifices every- 
thing to the sound, to the mere rounding of a period, 
which mistakes stage effect for nature. All who are at 
all used to writing know and detect the trick of the 
trade immediately, and, speaking for myself, I know 
that the writing which has the least appearance of 
literary manufacture almost always pleases me the best. 
It has more originality in narration of fictitious events : 
it most surely succeeds in giving the idea of reality and 
in making the biographer for the time pass for nothing. 
But there are few who can in this manner bear the 
mortification of staying behind the scenes. They peep 
out, eager for applause, and destroy all illusion by crying, 
*'/ said it! /wrote it! /invented it all! Call me to 
the stage and crown me directly ! " 



'' patronage:' 155 

Mrs. Inchbald had written praising Patron- 
age^ but she had also found some faults. To 
this Miss Edgeworth replied: — 

My dear Mrs. Inchbald : 

Nobody living but yourself could or would have 
written the letter I have just received from you. I wish 
you could have been present when it was read at our 
breakfast-table, that you might have seen what hearty en- 
tertainment and delight it gave to father, mother, author, 
aunts, brothers and sisters, all to the number of twelve. 
Loud laughter at your utter detestation of poor Erasmus 
"as nauseous as his medicines," and your impatience at 
all the variety of impertinent characters who distract 
your attention from Lord Oldborough. Your clinging to 
him quite satisfied us all. It was on this character my 
father placed his dependence, and we all agreed that if 
you had not liked him there would have been no hope 
for us. We are in the main of your opinion, that 
Erasmus and his letters are tiresome ; but then please 
recollect that we had our moral to work out, and to show 
to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the reader how 
in various professions young men may get on without 
patronage. To the good of our moral we were obliged 
to sacrifice; perhaps we have sacrificed in vain. Wher- 
ever we are tiresome we may be pretty sure of this, and 
after all, as Madame de Stael says, " good intentions go 
for nothing in works of art" — much better in French, 
'''•La bonne intention n''est de rien en fait d: esprit!''' 

You will make me foreswear truth altogether, for I find 
whenever I meddle with the least bit of truth I can make 
nothing of it, and it regularly turns out ill for me. Three 
things to which you object are facts, and that which you 
most abhor is most true. A nobleman whom I never 



IS6 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

saw and whose name I have forgotten, else I should not 
have used the anecdote — the word which you thought 
I could not have written and ought not to have known 
how to spell. But pray observe, XSi^fair authoress does 
not say this odious word in her own proper person. 
Why impute to me the characteristic improprieties of 
my characters ? I meant to mark the contrast between 
the niceness of his grace's pride and the coarseness of 
his expression. I have now changed the word severe 
into coarse to mark this to the reader. But I cannot 
alter without spoiling the fact. I tried if saliva would 
do, but it would not. So you must bear it as well as you 
can and hate His Grace of Greenwich as much as you 
will, but don't hate me. Did you hate Cervantes for 
drawing Sancho Panza eating behind the door 1 

My next fact, you say, is an old story. May be so, 
and may be it belonged to your writer originally, but I 
can assure you it happened very lately to a gentleman in 
Ireland, and only the parting with the servant was added. 
I admit the story is ill told and not worth telling, and 
you must admit that it is very natural or it would not 
have happened twice. 

The sixpence under the seal is my third fact. This 
happened in our own family. One of my own grand- 
father's uncles forged a will, and my grandfather recov- 
ered the estate my father now possesses by the detection 
of the forgery of a sixpence under the seal. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for liking the two 
Clays. But pray don't envelop all the country gentlemen 
of England in English Clay. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you, says my father, for 
liking Lady Jane Grandville. Her ladyship is his favor- 
ite, but nobody has ever mentioned her in their letters 
but you. I cannot believe that you ever resembled that 



''ORMONDE 157 

selfish, hollow Lady Angelica. Would you ever have 
guessed that the character of Rosamond is like — M. E.? 
All who know me intimately say it is as like as possible. 
Those who do not know me intimately would never 
guess it. 

Harrington came next. The idea of writing 
a story of which the hero should be a Jew was 
not her own, but suggested by an unknown 
correspondent in the United States, a Jewish 
lady, who gently reproached her for having so 
often made Jews ridiculous, and begged she 
would write a story that should treat of a good 
Jew. Scarcely was it finished than she began 
Ormond. In February, 1817, she read the first 
chapter to her father as they were driving out 
to pay a visit, the last Mr. Edgeworth ever 
paid. His health had become a source of grave 
anxiety, and though he masked all his suffer- 
ings with cheerfulness and touching unselfish- 
ness, it was too evident that his case was 
serious. The interest and delight he took in 
Ormond, and his desire to see the story finished, 
encouraged Miss Edgeworth to go on. 

Her stepmother writes : — 

In all her anguish of mind at the state of his health, 
Maria, by a wonderful effort of affection and genius, pro- 
duced those gay and brilliant pages, some of the gayest 
and most brilliant she ever composed. . . . The admir- 
able characters of King Corny and Sir Ulick O'Shane, 



IS8 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

and all the wonderful scenes full of wit, humor and feel- 
ing, were written in agony of anxiety, with trembling 
hand and tearful eyes. As she finished chapter after 
chapter, she read them out, the whole family assembling 
in their father's room to listen to them. Her father 
enjoyed these readings so exceedingly as to reward hei 
for the wonderful efforts she made. 

Enfeebled as he was by illness, and often 
while enduring pain, Mr. Edgeworth neverthe- 
less continued as before to revise his daughter's 
manuscript with *^an acuteness, a perseverance 
of attention of which. I cannot bear to think,'' 
she writes in after years. ^' He would work at 
it in his bed for hours together, once at an end 
for six hours, during an interval of sickness 
and exquisite pain." 

Thanks to the kindness of her publisher, she 
was able on Mr. Edgeworth' s birthday (May, 
1817) to put the printed volumes into his hands. 
It was the last book of hers to which he was to 
write a preface, and it was characteristic, like 
his others : — 

In my seventy-fourth year I have the satisfaction of 
seeing another work of my daughter brought before the 
public. This was more than I could have expected from 
my advanced age and declining health. I have been rep- 
rehended by some of the public critics for the notices 
which I have annexed to my daughter's works. As I do 
not know their reasons for this reprehension, I cannot 
submit even to their respectable authority. I trust, how- 



MR, EDGEWORTWS DEATH, 1 59 

ever, the British public will sympathize with what a 
father feels for a daughter's literary success, particularly 
as this father and daughter have written various works in 
partnership. The natural and happy confidence reposed 
in me by my daughter puts it in my power to assure the 
public that she does not write negligently. I can assert 
that twice as many pages were written for these volumes 
as are now printed. 

And now, indulgent reader, I beg you to pardon this 
intrusion, and with the most grateful acknowledgments 
I bid you farewell forever. 

Richard Lovell Edgeworth. 

This preface was dated May 31st, 18 17. On 
June 13th Mr. Edgeworth died, retaining to the 
last, as he had prayed, his intellectual faculties. 
His death was an acute grief to the whole fam- 
ily, a terrible, an irreparable blow to his eldest 
daughter. She was almost overwhelmed by 
sorrow, and during the first months that fol- 
lowed her father's death she wrote scarcely 
any letters. She had not the heart to do so ; 
besides, her eyesight had been so injured by 
weeping, as well as by overwork the previous 
winter, when she had been sitting up at night, 
struggling with her grief and writing Ormond, 
that it caused real alarm to her friends. She 
was unable to use her eyes without pain ; *'the 
tears,'' she said, "felt like the cutting of a 
knife." On this account, as well as from her 
sorrow, the rest of the year is a blank in her 



l6o MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

life. In the late autumn she went to stay at 
Black Castle with Mrs. Ruxton, who cheered 
and nursed her. With rare strength of mind 
she followed the medical directions to abstain 
from reading and writing. Needlework, too, of 
which she was fond, was forbidden to her ; she 
therefore learned to knit in order to employ 
herself. With patience, fortitude and cheerful 
disregard of self she bore the mental and phy- 
sical sufferings that marked the year 1817 a 
black one in her life. 



CHAPTER X. 

LATER NOVELS. GENERAL ESTIMATE. 

Few of Miss Edgeworth's stories were written 
quickly. In her case, however, the Horatian 
maxim was scarcely justified, for her best tales 
are almost without exception those written with 
a running pen. Patronage was one that was 
longest in hand, having originated in 1787 from 
a story told by Mr. Edgeworth to amuse his 
wife when recovering from her confinement. 
From her frequent mention of it, quite contrary 
to her usual custom, one may conclude she did 
not find it an easy task. In 181 1 she writes: 
^' I am working away at Patronage^ but cannot 
at all come up to my idea of what it should 
be.'* We do not know whether it ever did, 
but whatever her verdict may finally have 
been, it is certain that Patronage^ though one 
of the longest and most ambitious of her 
stories, is as a story one of the least successful. 
It is labored ; art and design are too apparent ; 
the purpose has too fatally hampered the 
invention. There is no denying that, while 
6 



l62 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

containing many excellent scenes, much shrewd 
observation of character, Patronage drags, and 
the reader is weary ere he has done. It is both 
artificial and commonplace, and what is more 
unfortunate still, the whole fabric is built upon 
a confusion of premises. Its purpose is to 
demonstrate the evils that result from patron- 
age, and to show how much more successful 
are those who rely only upon their own exer- 
tions. Both premises involve 2^ petitio principii, 
A capable person helped at the outset may 
have cause eternally to bless the patron who 
enabled him to start at once in his proper 
groove, instead of wasting strength and time 
after the endeavor— -often vain — to find it 
unassisted. Had she attempted to prove that 
it was better for each person to fight his way 
alone, because this was better for the moral 
development of his character, it would have 
been another matter. But this is not the line 
she pursues. There are no such subtle psychic 
problems worked out. The whole question is 
treated from the surface only, and the two 
families chosen to '^ point the moral'' are not 
fairly contrasted. The Percys, the good people 
who shrink from help so nervously that they 
would rather do themselves harm than accept 
a helping hand, possess every virtue and 
capacity under the sun, while their rivals and 



'' patronage:' 163 

relatives, the Falconers, have no resources 
but those of cringing falsehood. They are 
absolutely incapable, have learnt nothing, do 
not care to learn, and depend entirely upon 
finding a patron. They further rely upon their 
luck that, when settled in their various posts, 
no untoward accident may reveal their inability 
to fill them. Thus sound morality, good sense 
and an independent spirit are contrasted with 
meanness, folly and ignorance. As an eminent 
critic has well remarked : " The rival families 
are so unequal that they cannot be handi- 
capped for the race. The one has all the good 
qualities, the other almost all the bad. Re- 
verse the position; encumber the Percys (to 
borrow a Johnsonian phrase) with any amount 
of help; leave the Falconers entirely to their 
own resources; and the sole difference in the 
result under any easily conceivable circum- 
stances will be that the Percys will rise more 
rapidly and the Falconers will never rise at all." 
The materials of the fable, therefore, are not 
happy ; neither, such as they are, are they art- 
fully managed. The working out is bald, the 
moral bluntly enforced. Never was Miss Edge- 
worth more weighted by her aim, never were 
the fallacies of her cut-and-dried theories better 
illustrated. In this, her longest work, it is 
specially evident that her manner was not 



1 64 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

adapted to what the French call ouvrages de 
loitgite haleine. But i£ we at once dismiss from 
our minds the idea of deriving instruction from 
the fable, if we judiciously skip the dull pages 
of rhetoric or moral preachings that are inter- 
spersed, we can gain much real enjoyment from 
this book, whose characters are excellently 
planned and consistently carried out. Patron- 
age contains some of Miss Edgeworth's finest 
creations. The Percys as a whole are 

Too bright and good 
For human nature's daily food ; 

but even in their family had grown up a charac- 
ter whom we can love', with whom we can 
sympathize — the warm-hearted, generously 
impulsive, sprightly Rosamond, who, according 
to her own testimony, resembled her creator. 
Caroline Percy is one of the very wise, self-con- 
tained and excellent young persons who so often 
appear under different disguises in Miss Edge- 
worth's tales. She is exactly one of those 
heroines to whom applies the wickedly witty 
remark put by Bulwer into the mouth of Darrell 
in What Will He Do with It ? '' Many years 
since I read Miss Edgeworth's novels, and in 
conversing with Miss Honoria Vipont methinks 
I confer with one of Miss Edgeworth's heroines 
— so rational, so prudent, so well-behaved, so 



''PATRONAGES 165 

free from silly romantic notions, so replete with 
solid information, moral philosophy and natural 
history; so sure to regulate her watch and her 
heart to the precise moment, for the one to 
strike and the other to throb, and to marry at 
last a respectable, steady husband, whom she 
will win with dignity, and would love with — • 
decorum ! a very superior girl indeed." * 

There is also a certain family likeness in the 
good fathers of her books. They are, as a rule, 
preternaturally wise, circumspect, and apt to 
resemble Mr. Edgeworth. It has been well 
remarked that though we are told that a just 
man sins seven times a day. Miss Edgeworth's 
just heroes and heroines never fall. Undoubt- 
edly there is a want of variety as well as of 
human nature in her good characters, but not 
so in her bad. There she ranges over so wide a 
field that we can but wonder whence she gath- 
ered all this vast experience. She owned a 
perfect mine of social satire, and the skill with 
which she drew upon it and shaped her various 
characters, so as to give them a positive per- 
sonal interest and vitality, is astounding. She 
is equally happy in her villains, her fools, her 
fops ; indeed, in painting these latter species 
Miss Edgeworth is unrivalled. .She seemed to 

* It is but fair to add that Bulwer in a note disclaims the 
excessive severity and sweeping character of this criticism. 



1 66 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

know every weakness and absurdity of which 
human nature is capable. The manner in which 
she holds this up to view is sometimes almost 
remorseless, as from the altitude of one who has 
absolutely nothing in common with such crea- 
tures. In Patronage we have several such- 
Inimitable are the two Clays, brothers, men of 
large fortunes, which they spend in all manner 
of extravagance and profligacy, not from inclin- 
ation, but merely to purchase admission into 
fine company. They are known respectively as 
French and English Clay : the one affecting a 
preference for all that is French ; the other, a 
cold, reserved, dull man, as affectedly denounc- 
ing everything foreign, boasting loudly that 
everything about him is English, that only what 
is English is worthy ^attention ; *^ but whether 
this arises from love of his country or contempt 
of his brother'' does not appear. If there is 
anything to choose' between these two capital 
creations, English Clay is perhaps the better. 
His slow, surly reserve, supercilious silence and 
solemn self-importance are wonderfully sus- 
tained : but hardly less excellent is his brother, 
with his affected tones, his foreign airs, and 
quick, talkative vanity. Lord William is 
another remarkably well-drawn picture. He is 
an upright, honorable and enlightened noble- 
man, who constantly fails to do himself justice, 



''PA tronage:' 167 

because he labors under that morbid shyness 
known as fnauvaise hoitte^ so common in Eng- 
land, so rare out of her borders. The patron, 
Lord Oldborough, a high-minded^ austere, but 
absorbingly ambitious man, is elaborated with 
much care and penetration. Very skillfully are 
we made to feel that his vices are rather those 
of his position than of his heart. Nor must 
Buckhurst Falconer be passed over, the only 
member of the Falconer family who has one 
redeeming feature. He once had a heart, and, 
though weak as water, and swayed by the low 
principles that prevail in his family, he cannot 
succeed in stifling every good or noble feeling, 
though he has striven hard to compass this end. 
These will crop forth occasionally, though they 
cannot stay his descent down the path of cor- 
ruption. But they permit us to feel for him, to 
pity him ; he is no cut-and-dried mechanical 
knave. 

A book that contains so many fine concep- 
tions cannot be called a failure, even to-day, 
and since Miss Edgeworth's contemporaries 
admitted her premises, it is no wonder that on 
its appearance Patronage achieved a great suc- 
cess. In those days, when novel-writing had 
not become so much of an art as now, the rapid 
downfall of the whole Falconer family within 
the space of a few weeks presented nothing 



1 68 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

ludicrous. Such incidents were familiar in 
romance, and held allowable there, even if 
known to be untrue to life. We now judge 
from the latter standard only, and reject, even 
in fiction, the improbable. In Patronage^ Miss 
Edgeworth's fondness for poetical justice has 
certainly carried her very far. Here, as in 
other of her stories, difificulties are not allowed 
to develop and be overcome gradually, but the 
knot is cut in the most ludicrously childish and 
awkward manner, a summary catastrophe is 
imagined, so that the modern reader cannot 
forbear a smile. Still, Patronage remains a 
remarkable book, replete with sound sense, 
acute observation and rapid graphic illustrations 
of character. 

Scarcely so Harrington, Here, as in Patron- 
age. Miss Edgeworth had set herself to work 
out a moral, this time an apology for Jews. It 
was written to suggestion, and was on a theme 
that lay entirely outside the domain of her 
experience. She had to evolve a Jew out of 
her moral consciousness, and her delineation is 
as little successful as that of other writers who 
have set themselves the same task. Her zeal 
outran her judgment; her elaborate apology is 
feeble; and if the Jews needed vindication they 
could hardly be flattered by one of this nature, 
for she does not introduce us to a true Jew at 



''HARRINGTONS 169 

all. Her ideas were based upon that rare and 
beautiful character, Moses Mendelssohn, a char- 
acter as little typical of the Jewish as of any- 
other race or religious creed, but common to all 
men who think and feel philosophically and have 
raised themselves above the petty prejudices of 
mankind. This was as much as to say that 
only a Jew who was no Jew was admirable 
and estimable. And even his daughter Bere- 
nice, whom we are led to regard throughout as 
a Jewess, is finally discovered to have been 
born of a Christian mother and christened in 
her youth, so that her lover, Harrington, can 
marry her without any sacrifice to his social 
and racial prejudices. This is weak indeed, 
since the whole purpose of the story was to 
overcome the baseless dislike Harrington had 
from childhood entertained for the mere name 
of Jew. It would, therefore, have been far 
more to the purpose had his prejudices been 
really, and not apparently, overcome. The 
truth is that Miss Edgeworth herself was a lady 
not free from prej udices ; and a regard for the 
opinion of the world, for birth and social station, 
was one of these. At the eleventh hour she 
probably could not reconcile herself to letting 
her hero, a man of good society, marry a Span- 
ish Jewess ; and since he had shown himself 
willing to do so, carried away by his deep and 



I/O MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

sincere feeling, she doubtless held that he had 
done enough, and so terrible a fate must be 
averted from his head. 

The story could not and did not satisfy Miss 
Mordecai's requirements, though she accepted 
it as an attempt at making amends. But the 
authoress herself recognized in later life that 
her friend ^* had no reason to be satisfied with 
it, as the- Jewess turns out to be a Christian. 
Yet she was good enough to accept it as a 
peace-offering, and to consider that this was an 
Irish blunder, which, with the best intentions, 
I could not avoid.'' 

Contemporary opinion certainly treated Har- 
rington as not one of the happiest of their favor- 
ite novelist's stories. Yet with all its palpable 
defects there is such an admixture of excellence 
that Harringtort should not be left unread, even 
though we may regret that such capital figures, 
painted with such nice skill and delicate dis- 
crimination, should be imbedded in so puerile 
a tale. The characters are keenly and lightly 
drawn, standing out boldly and clearly. The 
jargon of society is once more successfully 
reproduced, as well as those fashionable ladies 
who hide the claws of a tigress under a velvet 
paw, and whose complex and shifting nature 
Miss Edgeworth understood so well and repro- 
duced so faithfully. How she, with her simple, 



''HARRINGTONS I/I 

direct character, came to comprehend them so 
fully, is almost a marvel. But intuition of 
character was a forte with Miss Edgeworth and 
the grand secret of her novelistic success. Her 
truth of touch was remarkable. Lady Anne 
Mowbray is a perfect model of that mixture of 
feline grace and obstinate silliness which the 
world so much admires in its young ladies ; 
while her mother's insignificance, which is not 
disguised by a stately, formal manner, is delin- 
eated and sustained to perfection. Lord Mow- 
bray is yet another of Miss Edgeworth's mar- 
velously acute portraits of a true man of the 
world, of an evil nature. This is concealed by 
a fair semblance and good manners, so that it 
is needful to know him well to guess at the 
villain that is hidden under this attractive 
disguise. 

Miss Edgeworth is at her ease and at her 
happiest in Onnond, Here she is on Irish 
ground, always for her the best, where she 
moves with most abaiidon ; where she casts 
aside for a time some of her cold philosophy, 
and allows herself to appear as the vivacious 
Irishwoman, which at heart she was, Ireland, 
with its long history of bloodshed and social 
disorder, had none of those romantic incidents 
to offer to the novelist that were to be found in 
the equally wild but more noble and chivalric 



172 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

history of Scotland. Hence Sir Walter Scott 
had an easier task to perform than Miss Edge- 
worth. The history of which he treated 
allowed of judicious and poetic gilding. It 
lifted into more romantic regions. Irish his- 
tory has, unfortunately, never been elevating, 
soul-ennobling. It is too much the record of 
rebellious seditions and foolish intrigues, lightly 
entered upon, inconsistently carried out. Such 
a history could scarcely kindle romantic ideas 
and desires in the hearts of youth, as did Scott's 
pictures ; and Miss Edgeworth did wisely in 
her Irish tales to leave history carefully on one 
side, and to deal only with the Hibernian char- 
acter and the delineation of social manners. 
For many years the mere name of Irishman 
had been regarded in England as a term of 
reproach, and they figured as buffoons in all 
the novels and plays of the period. It was 
Miss Edgeworth who first came to the rescue 
of her countrymen, and she did this by no 
exaggerated praises, but by sympathetic yet 
true presentment. Her national story of Castle 
Rackrent had established for her a reputation 
as a relentlessly truthful writer. She had 
invested the tale with none of the poetical gla- 
mor employed by most historical novelists, who 
seek to hide from sight the ugly sores that 
exist in the society they depict, and thus 



''ORMONDr 173 

endeavor to make us deem that those good old 
times of which they write had, despite their 
lawlessness, some power and strength of good- 
ness unknown to us. Miss Edgeworth was too 
realistic a portrait painter to employ such 
methods ; hence, where Sir Walter Scott's 
rich imagination led him at times astray, she, 
on her part, was often hampered for want of 
that faculty. Still, her very reserve was fortu- 
nate, considering the theme on which it was 
exercised, as matters Irish have for some cause 
never been treated with judicial calmness. 
Hence to no writer are the Irish so much 
indebted. Their less judicious friends were 
satisfied with indignantly repelling the charges 
made against them, while national partiality 
magnified all their gifts. Miss Edgeworth felt 
with them, loved them, but she was not blinded 
by her affection. Starting from the assumption 
that the prejudices which existed against her 
countrymen arose from imperfect acquaintance 
with them, she candidly presented them just as 
they were, with both their virtues and vices 
unvarnished. 

After Castle Rackrent^ Ormond was certainly 
the finest effort of Miss Edgeworth's genius, 
and it is scarcely fanciful to believe that it 
owes some of its excellence to the influence 
exerted upon her mind by Waverley. Had she 



174 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

but had Scott's eye for nature, and introduced 
us to some of the beautiful scenery in which 
her story occurs, the book might worthily rank 
beside any of the Scotch Waverley novels. Was 
it owing to Scott's influence, also, that we have 
in this case a less obtrusive moral ? 

The story of Ormoitd is in some respects the 
reverse of Vivian, The hero possesses innate 
force of character, and we watch in his career 
the progress of a mind that has not been culti- 
vated, but shows itself capable of being educated 
by circumstances. Ormond is one of those per- 
sons in whom native intuition takes the place 
of instruction, and who of their proper strength 
are equal to all emergencies. The complica- 
tions of the story arise from these inward pro- 
pensities of his nature and the contending 
influences from without with which he has to 
grapple. He was an orphan who had been 
adopted by Sir Ulick O' Shane, but had not 
been educated, because Sir Ulick deemed that 
there was no use giving him the education of a 
landed gentleman when he was not likely to 
have an estate. An unfortunate difference 
with Sir Ulick's wife obliged Ormond to leave 
his guardian's roof and avail himself of the hos- 
pitality of a cousin, Cornelius O' Shane, who 
called himself King of the Black Islands, after 
his estate. More familiarly this original is 



''ORMONDE 17s 

spoken of as King Corny. Besides being one 
of the most delightful creations in romantic 
literature, he is an instructive study towards 
the comprehension of the Irish character. 
Macaulay pointed out, in speaking of the abo- 
riginal aristocracy of Ireland, that Miss Edge- 
worth's King Corny belonged to a later and 
much more civilized generation, but added that 
*^ whoever has studied that admirable portrait 
can form some notion of what King Corny's 
great-grandfather must have been like." King 
Corny is a most genuine character ; there is no 
nonsense, no false reticence about him ; he is 
hasty and violent at times, but he is not ashamed 
to show it, neither does he hide his warm, kind 
heart. His frank and unsuspecting nature 
makes him adored by all his tenantry, none of 
whom would wrong their king. There is not a 
page in which he figures that does not furnish 
charming reading, and there is not a reader but 
will resent that King Corny is made to die so 
early in the book. It is all the more vexatious 
to have the most original and attractive figure 
thus removed, because it was needless for the 
due development of the story. That the inter- 
est, which certainly flags after his demise, is 
sustained at all is a proof that the story, as a 
story, is above Miss Edgeworth's average. And 
indeed, attention is well maintained to the end, 



1/6 MARIA EDGEWQRTH, 

notwithstanding a few most marvelously unnat- 
ural incidents that occur in the latter portion 
and stagger , belief. They once more reveal 
Miss Edgeworth's curious clumsiness in getting 
her brain-children out of the difficulties in which 
she has involved them. The quick alternation 
of laughter and tears that is a marked feature 
of her Irish tales recurs in the earlier portions 
of the book, where the scene is laid in the 
Black Islands, of which Harry Ormond becomes 
*' prince presumptive.'* The famous postilion's 
letter in the Absentee is hard run by the letter 
King Corny writes to Ormond when offering 
him his hospitality. Admirable, too, is the 
account of his reception by the single-hearted, 
generous, though eccentric monarch. This 
reception scene is characteristic of the primi- 
tive and somewhat dissolute manners of the 
time. Indeed, the whole of Harry Ormond's 
residence in the Black Islands affords Miss 
Edgeworth opportunities for exercising her 
peculiar felicity in displaying manners and 
customs. She does not present these by 
merely a few prominent and striking traits, 
but with delicate skill she insinuates little 
touches here and there that give local color 
and perfume to the whole. It is quite true 
that Miss Edgeworth's books bear reading 
twice ; once for the general impression, the 



''ORMONDE 177 

second time to see how cunningly this 
impression is produced. 

Miss Edgeworth not having in the case of 
Ormond weighted herself with a text, we have 
hardly any of her "unco' gude '* characters, but 
many of those mixtures that are truer to poor 
humanity. The exceptions are Lady and Miss 
Annaly, some of her monotonously similar pat- 
tern women, and Dr. Cambray, one of her dull 
and wooden immaculate men. Happily they 
appear biit little in the story. The most able 
character, after King Corny, is Sir Ulick 
O' Shane, the political schemer and trimmer. A 
more vulgar or common-place writer would have 
represented him as an offensive hypocrite. Miss 
Edgeworth does not paint him' in repellent col- 
ors, but lets him reveal his baseness little by 
little, and rather against his will, until the final 
catastrophe presents him in all his native vile- 
ness. His easy and agreeable social manners, 
his gentlemanly mode of feeling and acting, due, 
no doubt, to a long inheritance of gentlemanly 
traditions, are shown with profound penetration. 
It is a part of Miss Edgeworth's power to evince 
how "great effects from trivial causes spring; " 
she makes us vividly realize all the circum- 
stances under which her events occur. Thus 
we witness their development, instead of being 
only presented with the final results. This was 



178 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

rather a new departure in her day, when events 
finished, cut and dried, were alone considered 
worthy of note. In her conversations she 
shows considerable dramatic skill : they are 
enlivened not only by looks and gestures, but 
by what is often as significant, by moments of 
silence, by changes of countenance, by all the 
minor matters that distinguish spoken from 
written words. Neither in dramatic presenta- 
tion of incident, nor in picturesqueness and 
vividness of character-drawing, has Miss Edge- 
worth ever touched a higher standard than in 
Ormond, The fact that it was written and sent 
to press so quickly, in order to gratify her sick 
father, proved in its favor. The result was that 
it was penned with more spontaneity, was less 
carefully worked up than either Patronage or 
Belinday or even the Absentee^ and consequently 
it reads more natural. There are fewer forced 
sentences, fewer attempts at pointed and epi- 
grammatic writing. These epigrammatic sen- 
tences, which, with but few exceptions, are but 
half epigrams, are somewhat aggravating, espe- 
cially if too constantly repeated, since they thus 
picture neither common nor uncommon talk. 
It is this tendency, carried to its highest 
expression in the Moder7i Griselda^ that makes 
Miss Edgeworth's personages, while acting and 
thinking like real people, not always talk as 



GENERAL ESTIMATE, 1 79 

men and women would. As a rule, however, 
her style is easy, finished, flexible, and at times 
racy, and while seldom rising to eloquence, 
never sinking to tameness. Now and then it is 
a trifle cold, and she is too fond of erudite or 
far-fetched illustrations. The conversation of 
her day was, to use the language of the day, 
"polite ;" that is to say, slightly stilted, prim, 
and confined within narrow bounds, and that 
she reflected it is a matter of course, but, as a 
whole, she managed to keep herself singularly 
free from its worst features. Indeed, her work 
was really of first-rate quality, and if we read it 
without troubling ourselves about her ethical 
designs or expecting to find a cleverly-told plot, 
we cannot fail to derive enjoyment from it, or 
to comprehend why her contemporaries rated 
her so highly, though they, on their part, per- 
haps, valued her moral teaching more than the 
present generation, which does not believe in 
mere sermons as panaceas. Indeed, now-a-days, 
the fashion is too much to divorce art from 
didactic intention. In those days it was the 
fashion to over-rate the service works of imagin- 
ation can render virtue. 

It would be easy to bring forward testimony 
regarding the fervent admiration bestowed on 
Miss Edgeworth by her contemporaries. She 
certainly missed, but she only just missed, the 



l8o MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

highest greatness. Did Madame de Stael put 
her sure finger on the cause when she said, 
after reading Fashionable Tales and expressing 
her great admiration, ^* Que Miss Edgeworth 
etait digne de V enthousiasme^ mais qu! elle s' est 
perdue da7ts la triste titilitef Yet to preach- 
utility was held by Miss Edgeworth as a duty ; 
but for this she might perhaps never have 
written at all, since no pecuniary needs drove 
her to authorship. And allowing for this 
moral strain in her works, and the blemishes 
that result thence, which compared with all 
she achieved are but trivial, in estimating her 
work as a whole, we may well afford to change 
what Chateaubriand called "the petty and 
meagre criticism of defects for the compre- 
hensive and prolific criticism of beauties/' 
We must not look for features such as she 
cannot furnish, any more than we should seek 
for figs upon an apple-tree. There are certain 
things Miss Edgeworth can do, and do inimi- 
tably ; there are others entirely foreign to her 
sphere. Her novels have been described as 
a sort of essence of common sense, and even 
more happily it has been said that it was her 
genius to be wise. We must be content to 
take that which she can offer ; and since she 
offers so much, why should we not be content ? 
Miss Edgeworth wrote of ordinary human life, 



GENERAL ESTIMATE. l8l 

and not of tremendous catastrophes or highly 
romantic incidents. Hers was no heated fancy. 
She had no comprehension of those fiery 
passions, those sensibilities that burn like 
tinder at contact with the feeblest spark ; she 
does not believe in chance, that favorite of so 
many novelists ; neither does she deal in ruined 
castles, underground galleries nor spectres, as 
was the fashion in her day. In her stories 
events mostly occur as in sober and habitual 
fact. In avoiding the stock-in-trade of her 
contemporaries she boldly struck out a line 
of her own which answers in some respects 
to the modern realistic novel, though devoid, 
of course, of its anatomical and physiological 
character. She used materials which her 
predecessors had scorned as worthless. She 
endeavored to show that there is a poetry in 
self-restraint as well as in passion, though at 
the very time she wrote it was the fashion to 
sneer at this, and to laud as fine that self- 
forgetfulness, that trampling down of all 
obstacles, no matter of what nature, sung by 
Byron and Shelley. She permitted just that 
amount of tenderness which the owner could 
keep under due control. She had no taste 
for what was named the grandeur, beauty and 
mystery of crime. She seldom devoted her 
attention to crimes at all, but gave it to those 



1 82 MARIA EDGEWORTH. . 

minor virtues and vices that contribute more 
largely to our daily sufferings or enjoyments. 
The novels of her day were too apt to bring 
forward angels or monsters, and though she 
also erred at times in the former respect, yet 
on the whole she departed from it, and was 
among the first to strike out that path since so 
successfully trodden, especially by female novel- 
ists, and notably by George Eliot — that of 
interesting us in persons moving in the com- 
mon walks of men. In her Popular and 
Moral Tales she was encumbered like a clergy- 
man in his sermon, and hence a too solemn 
and rather stifling air of moral reflection is 
apt to pervade. That she overcame it as much 
as she did, that her novels are as attractive 
and readable as they are, is to the credit of 
her genius, which not even Mr. Edgeworth 
could wholly overlay and stiflq, and she thus 
with few exceptions triumphed over that 
tendency to the ^* goody," from which it seems 
so difficult for works intended for edification 
to keep themselves exempt. Next to her 
children's and Irish tales she is most excellent 
in her studies from fashionable life. Her 
heroes and heroines moving in the dismal round 
of inanities, miscalled diversions, are portraits 
touched up with nice care in detail, with a 
keen eye for subtleties and demi-tints. She 



GENERAL ESTIMATE. 1 83 

loved to expose the false and mawkish doc- 
trines thought fit for women. Her fashionable 
heroines followed the sentimental teachings 
of Rousseau and Mrs. Chapone, and held that 
the highest mission of woman is to please, 
and that she should be not only excused but 
commended if she employed every art to 
compass that end. High-mindedness was a 
factor unknown or at least unadmitted in their 
philosophy ; fashion governed all ; to be in 
the fashion was the main object of their lives. 
Miss Edgeworth did not condemn this too 
mercilessly or from too lofty a platform. Her 
morality, though unexceptionable, is never 
austere; she allows and even sanctions worldly 
wisdom within certain limits; she was too 
much a woman of the world herself to set up 
Utopian or ascetic standards. To make con- 
science agree with the demands of polite 
opinion was admitted to be a desirable and 
important factor. After all, we are all more 
or less affected by the mental atmosphere in 
which we live ; none of us can wholly get 
outside the spiritual air that environs us, and 
see things from different points of view; and 
Miss Edgeworth could do so less than many, 
because she was less highly endowed with 
sympathetic imagination. Thus her short- 
comings are, in her case, more than in that 



1 84 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

of many others, the fault of her surroundings 
and education. For, placed immediately under 
Mr. Edgeworth^s personal influence, his powers 
of suasion and plausible presentment, it was 
not easy to escape, and his daughter never 
questioned his final wisdom or desired such 
escape. In a critical reading of her books 
it is amusing to note how ever and again her 
father crops forth. Thus her heroes constantly 
ask what manner of education the young lady 
of their choice has received, because as 
"prudent men'* they feel that only on this can 
they base their future hopes of happiness. 
And yet, strangely enough, with this absolute 
faith in the power of education is combined 
a belief that nothing, not even this almighty 
thing, can overcome the fact that if a girl be 
the daughter of a woman who has at any time 
forgotten herself, no matter how good the 
education may have been, no matter that this 
parent may have died at her birth or the child 
never lived beside her. Miss Edgeworth's heroes 
regard her as necessarily lost — consider that 
it is impossible she should continue in the 
straight path. They will stifle their strongest 
feelings ; make themselves and the girl miser- 
able rather than marry her. A special instance 
of this occurs in the Absentee^ where Lord 
Cblambre prefers to break off his engagement 



GENERAL ESTIMATE, 1 85 

with his adored cousin, the charming and high- 
spirited Grace Nugent, rather than wed her 
after he hears a rumor that her mother has 
not been legally married to her father. Hence 
a deus ex machina has to be evoked, who, like 
all such gods, cuts the Gordian knot in bung- 
ling fashion. After attributing all possibilities 
to education, there is quite a comic inconsis- 
tency in this method of visiting the offenses 
of the wrong-doer upon the victim. But Miss 
Edgeworth, or rather her father, appeared to 
have no comprehension of the fact that mis- 
fortunes of birth most frequently act on the 
children as a deterrent ; so that they make, 
as it were, hereditary expiation. But here 
appears the want of tenderness in Miss Edge- 
worth's work — a quantity she owned as a 
woman and lacked as an author. The two 
were certainly curiously different at times. 
But though not tender, she is always amiable 
and kindly, even though she does not look far 
beneath the surface and never deals with 
the soul. Unknown to her were its silent 
tragedies, its conflicts, hopes and fears. Those 
feelings that did not manifest themselves in 
life or action were beyond her range of com- 
prehension. She had a genius for observing 
such things as can be observed; the lower 
depths are never stirred by herself or her 



1 86 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

characters. But it was her genius for observa- 
tion, her power for reproducing what she had 
seen, that mad^ her greatness — a greatness 
limited in its extent, but none the less great- 
ness of its kind. Her works fully merit the 
admiration they have so long enjoyed. 

An amusing summing-up of Miss Edgeworth's 
novels is given by Leigh Hunt in his poem, 
Blue Stocking Revels, Apollo gives a ball to 
all the eminent contemporary authoresses, and 
criticises his guests as they enter. 

At the sight of Miss Edgeworth he says : — 

** Here comes one 
As sincere and kind as lives under the sun ; 
Not poetical, eh ? nor nauch given to insist 
On utilities not in utility's list. 

(Things nevertheless without which the large heart 
Of my world would but play a poor husk of a part.) 
But most truly within her own sphere sympathetic, 

. And that's no mean help towards the practic-poetic." 
Then smiling, he said a most singular thing — 
He thanked her for making him " saving of string ! " 
But for fear she should fancy he did not approve her in 
Matters more weighty, praised her Manoeuvring, 
A book which, if aught could pierce craniums so dense, 
Might supply cunning folks with a little good sense. 

" And her Irish " (he added),** poor souls ! so impressed him, 
He knew not if most they amused or distressed him." 

And now finally we are confronted with the 
question, will Miss Edgeworth's works live, or 
will they be left to grow dusty upon the library- 



GENERAL ESTIMATE, 1 8/ 

shelves, in company with many names much 
respected in their day ? Who shall say ? The 
novel is, of its very essence, the most ephem- 
eral style of literature, since it deals with the 
ever-shifting pictures of its time. Nor is this 
unjust. The novelist of worth receives, as a 
rule, his meed of recognition in his life -time, 
which is not the lot of writers in all branches 
of literature. On the other hand, to the stu- 
dent of manners, novels have a value no histo- 
rian can outvie, and on this account alone Miss 
Edgeworth's should not be left unread. But 
not only on this account, for it is perhaps just 
in this direction that they err somewhat ; for 
though no doubt true pictures of one section of 
society, there is no denying that Miss Edge- 
worth's outlook is not catholic ; that the world, 
as she saw it, was prescribed almost exclusively 
within the bounds of so-called *^good society" 
— a circle in which the heights and depths of 
life and feeling are rarely touched, because of 
the conventional boundaries within which its 
inmates are cooped. 

Whence, then, the undeniable fact that Miss 
Edgeworth has gradually grown to join that 
band of authors known as standard, who are 
more spoken of than read } There is so much 
in her mode of life-conception that is entirely 
modern, so much that is in keeping rather with 



1 88 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

the advanced school of utilitarian ethicists than 
with the more sentimental .school of her day, 
that it certainly does appear puzzling why she 
has not better maintained her place; for it 
would be idle to pretend that she has main- 
tained it such as it was in her life-time. It 
cannot be because her plots are ill-constructed. 
When at her best she holds attention notwith- 
standing. Nor does an author's power to en- 
gross us at all depend on his constructive 
faculty. Indeed, some of those writers who 
most hold their readers have distinctly lacked 
this gift, which often exists independently of 
fine novelistic qualities. In portions of her work 
Miss Edgeworth need fear no rivals. Why is 
it, then, that in attempting an estimate of her 
powers, while allowing to her first-class excel- 
lences, we have to deny her a first-class place, 
thus condoning, to some extent, those who 
leave her unread to turn to less edifying and 
admirable writers .? Is it not because there is 
absent from Maria Edgeworth's writings that 
divine spark of the ideal that alone allows 
works to live for all time — that spark which 
it is given to many an inferior author -to 
own, while it is here denied to a woman of 
great intellectual power } While preeminently 
upright, high-principled and virtuous. Miss 
Edgeworth's ethics are pervaded by a certain 



GENERAL ESTIMATE. 1 89 

coldness and self-consciousness that irresistibly 
give to her good people a pharisaical character; 
an impression from which it is always difficult 
and at times impossible for the reader to shake 
himself free. Her heroes and heroines act 
with too little spontaneity ; they seem to cal- 
culate and know too surely the exact sum total 
of ultimate gain that will, in a justly-ordered 
world, accrue to them for their good actions, 
their self-sacrifice and devotion. Her heroes 
are almost as calculating as her villains. 

It is a severe test to which to put an author, 
to read all his works consecutively ; but it is 
one that more surely than aught else enables 
us to mark his place of merit. If he can stand 
this trial he is decidedly above the average ; if 
he issue thence triumphant he may without 
hesitation be pronounced among the great. 
Miss Edgeworth weathers this test very re- 
spectably ; indeed it, more than all else, 
enforces upon the reader the great versatility 
she displays in character and situation. Yet 
it is just after such a perusal that the absolute 
lack of the ideal element is so strongly borne in 
upon us. As the thirsty mountaineer drinks 
eagerly from the first clear streamlet that meets 
him trickling down from the heights, so Miss 
Edgeworth' s readers eagerly turn from her to 
some more spontaneous writer to quench the 



IQO MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

drought that this continuous perusal has engen- 
dered. Even in this prosaic and materialistic 
age the belief in blue roses is happily not 
wholly dead ; and though we will not suffer the 
garden of a novelist to grow no other plant, 
because we know that one filled with blue roses 
only is out of nature in this terrestrial globe, 
yet, in a well-ordered parterre, we do require 
that the blue rose should also have its place. 
It is to novelist and poet that the cultivation of 
this rare and heaven-born plant has been en- 
trusted. Miss Edgeworth knew it not. Neither 
by hereditary tendency nor by training had she 
made acquaintance with this wonder-flower, for 
whose botanical analysis Mr. Edgeworth would 
have searched a Flora in vain, and whose exist- 
ence he would therefore stoutly have denied. 

With '^little stores of maxims," like Tenny- 
son's faithless love, Miss Edgeworth, acting 
from the very highest motives, after careful 
and philosophic deliberation, at personal suffer- 
ing to herself, in her printed words, preached 
down the instincts of the heart. She knew 
not that excellent as utilitarianism is in its 
place and sphere, there is something more, 
something beyond, that is needed to form the 
basis upon which human actions are set in 
motion. For the spiritual and divine element 
in man she made no allowance, and it was this 



GENERAL ESTIMATE, 191 

that drew down on her, from shallow contem- 
porary critics, that condemnation of want of 
religion, flung in a narrow, dogmatic spirit, 
that wounded her so deeply. Outwardly the 
Edgeworths conformed to the established faith, 
and though liberal in the sense of being wide- 
minded, they were not in religious matters 
advanced in thought. Indeed, they thought 
little, if at all, of the next world, finding full 
occupation for their minds in this. Miss 
Edgeworth was hemmed in by the visible ; 
she did not seek to justify the ways of God to 
man ; life was to her no riddle ; if man would 
but act rightly, all would be well ; she deemed 
that it is given into his own hands to do good 
or evil, to be happy or the reverse. There was 
in her nothing of the poet and the seer ; and by 
so much as she fails to speak to humanity in all 
its aspects, by so much she fails to take rank 
among the greatest teachers of our race. But 
with wisdom and good sense she recognized 
her limitations ; she set herself a humbler but 
no less useful task ; she carried out her aim 
faithfully and conscientiously, and by so much 
she too must be ranked among the good and 
faithful servants who do the work appointed by 
their Lord. And after all, is not the harmony 
of humanity best served by the free emission 
of the most diverse notes t Miss Edgeworth 



192 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

set herself to preach utilitarianism and the 
minor virtues. She succeeded ; and in so far 
as she succeeded in that which she set herself 
to do, life was for her successful, and she was 
great. 



CHAPTER XL 

VISITS ABROAD AND AT HOME. 

Life at Edgeworthstown underwent no out- 
ward change owing to the death of its master. 
His place was taken by his eldest and unmar- 
ried son, Lovell, who sought to the best of his 
abilities to keep the house a home for his 
father's widow and his numerous brothers and 
sisters, an endeavor in which he was successful. 
Miss Edgeworth describes herself at this time 
as '^ quite absorbed in low domestic interests, of 
which only those who love home and love us 
can possibly bear to hear.'' 

For some years after her father's death all 
she did was done as an effort, and more from 
a high sense of duty and from the thought that 
it would have pleased him who was gone, than 
from any inner desire to act. When the family 
after a short absence reassembled at Edge- 
worthstown, it required all her inherited activ- 
ity of mind, all her acquired self-command, to 
enable her to keep up her spirits on reentering 
7 



194 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

that house in which for her the light was 
quenched. It was well for her not only that 
work was the purpose in life of all that family, 
that no drones were suffered in that household, 
but that her work had been planned for her by 
her father, and that in settling down to it she 
was obeying his commands. 

It had been not only his darling wish, but 
his dying injunction, that she should complete 
the memoir of his life which he had begun and 
abandoned ten years previously. Why Mr. 
Edgeworth had written his life is not made 
clear, even by the preface, in which he attempts 
to explain the reasons that impelled him. The 
real reason was probably the excessive impor- 
tance he attached to himself and his actions. It 
had always been his intention that Miss Edge- 
worth should revise and complete this memoir ; 
but when he was dying he emphatically enjoined 
that it should be published without any change. 
This complicated her task, which she felt a 
heavy one. Excepting a few passages, he had 
never shown what he had written even to his 
own family ; and when he was urged by them 
to continue it, he used to say he '' would leave 
the rest to be finished by his daughter Maria.'* 
Almost before her eyes were recovered she set 
to work upon her pious duty. Her anxiety lest 
she should not do justice to the theme weighed 



LIFE AT HOME, 1 95 

upon her so greatly that she could hardly speak 
of the memoirs even to her most intimate 
friends. It is reflected in the touchingly 
helpless preface she prefixed to the second 
volume : — , 

Till now I have never on any occasion addressed 
myself to the public alone, and speaking in the first 
person. This egotism is not only repugnant to my 
habits, but most painful and melancholy. Formerly I 
had always a friend and father who spoke and wrote for 
me ; one who exerted for me all the powers of his strong 
mind, even to the very last. Far more than his protect- 
ing kindness I regret, at this moment, the want of his 
guiding judgment now, when it is most important to 
me — where his fame is at stake. 

To save her eyesight her sisters assisted her 
in copying or in writing from her dictation ; 
but even so she was forced to use her own 
vision, and while busy with the memoirs she 
allowed herself little of what was now her 
greatest relaxation, writing letters to her 
friends: — 

We are looking to the bright side of every object that 
remains to us, and many blessings we have still. I am 
now correcting what I had written of my father's life, and 
shall be for some m^onths, so shall not write any letters 
of such length as this. 

Bear up and struggle as she would, bitterly 
and painfully she missed the always kind and 



196 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

ready adviser, the sympathetic intellectual com- 
panion, who had stood by her side till now and 
aided her in every difficult task. She felt like 
"drifting over an unknown sea without chart or 
compass." Nor were her spirits or those of the 
family raised by outward events. Wet seasons 
had induced famine and typhus fever, and the 
tenants were suffering from disease and distress. 
Then, too, the family had their own private 
anxieties in the illness of William, Lovell and 
Fanny. They were all more or less delicate; 
most of them had inherited consumptive ten- 
dencies, and many months rarely passed without 
Miss Edgeworth having to record cases of sick- 
ness in those about her. These illnesses always 
absorbed her whole attention, called forth all 
her kindliness and unselfishness. She was 
ever the ready, willing nurse, the writer of bul- 
letins to those away, the cheerer of long, sad 
hours of suffering. They were weary months, 
those early ones of 18 18, and only in her affec- 
tions did she find comfort. She writes : — 

I was always fond of being loved, but of late I am 
become more sensible of the soothing power of affection- 
ate expressions. Indeed, I have reason, although much 
has been taken from me, to be heartily grateful for all I 
have left of excellent friends, and for much, much unex- 
pected kindness which has been shown to me and mine, 
not only by persons unconnected by any natural ties with 
me or them, but from mere acquaintance become friends. 



LIFE AT HOME. 1 97 

In June she was able to announce : " I am 
now within two months' work of finishing all I 
mean to write ; but the work of revision and 
consideration — O ! most anxious considera- 
tion/' She was still desirous of having the 
opinion of friends, and more especially she 
desired the opinion of M. Dumont. Hearing 
he was to stay with Lord Lansdowne, at Bowood, 
she yielded to the importunities of these friends 
and went there to meet him, taking with her 
her sister Honora. She was soon able to tell 
Mrs. Edgeworth that Dumont " has been very 
much pleased with my father's manuscript ; he 
has read a good deal and likes it. He hates 
Mr. Day in spite of all his good qualities ; he 
says he knows he could not bear that sort of 
man, who has such pride and misanthropies 
about trifles, raising a great theory of morals 
upon an amour propre blesse'' 

The change of scene was clearly beneficial to 
her. Once more her letters were filled with 
the anecdotes, the interesting talk she hears, 
accounts of which she knows will give pleasure 
to those at home. To give pleasure to others 
was always the one thought uppermost in her 
mind. '' I am a vile correspondent when I 
have nothing to say ; but at least I do write in 
some sort of way when I know I have some- 
thing to say that will give pleasure to my 



198 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

friends/' The whole character of the woman 
is revealed in these simple words. Among the 
good stories she tells from Bowood is one con- 
cerning Madame de Stael : — 

Madame de Stael — I tumble anecdotes together as I 
recollect them — Madame de Stael had a great wish to 
see Mr. Bowles, the poet, or as Lord Byron calls him, the 
sonneteer; she admired his sonnets and his Spirit of 
Maritime Discovery^ and ranked him high as an English 
genius. In riding to Bowood he fell and sprained his 
shoulder, but still came on. Lord Lansdowne alluded to 
this in presenting him to Madame de Stael, before din- 
ner, in the midst of the listening circle. She began to 
compliment him and herself upon the exertion he had 
made to come and see her . " O, ma'am, say no more, for 
I would have done a great deal more to see so great a 
curiosity ! " Lord Lansdowne says it is impossible to 
describe the shock in Madame de Stael's face — the 
breathless astonishment and the total change produced 
in her opinion of the man. She said afterwards to Lord 
Lansdowne, who had told her he was a simple country 
clergyman, ^^Je vois Men que ce it' est qu'un simple curi 
qui fCa pas le sens com^fnun qiwique grand poete .^ " 

From Bowood Miss Edgeworth paid some 
other visits, seeing many old friends, and 
among them Mrs. Barbauld and the Misses 
Baillie: — 

Joanna Baillie and her sister, most kind, cordial and 
warm-hearted, came running down their little flagged 
walk to welcome us. Both Joanna and her sister have 



LIFE AT HOME. 1 99 

such agreeable and new conversation — not old trumpery 
literature over again, and reviews, but new circumstances 
worth telling apropos to every subject that is touched 
upon; frank observations on character without either 
ill nature or the fear of committing themselves ; no blue- 
stocking tittle-tattle or habits of worshipping or being 
worshipped; domestic, affectionate, good to live with 
and without fussing, continually doing what is most 
obliging and whatever makes us feel most at home. 
Breakfast is very pleasant in this house, the two good 
sisters look so neat and cheerful. 

Although she had met with much encourag- 
ing criticism in the matter of her father s life, 
she still hesitated to publish. ''The result of 
all I see, think and feel," she tells her step- 
mother, ''is that we should be in no haste.*' 
Down to the very business arrangements the 
book weighed on her. She had hitherto left 
all such details to her father; and her kind 
friend Johnson being also dead, she felt yet 
more undecided how to act. At every moment, 
in every detail of her life, she missed her 
father ; but she was too brave a woman not to 
struggle with her grief, or not to adapt herself 
to altered conditions. Her eyes still caused 
her much trouble, and for nearly two years she 
was obliged to give them almost entire rest. 

But for her patience and fortitude in follow- 
ing the doctor's injunctions, it seems possible 
she might have entirely lost her sight. As it 



200 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

was, a complete recovery took place ; and 
though at times her eyes were weak, she was 
able to the end of her life to read, write and 
work with ease. At the end of the year 1819 
she is able gleefully to tell her cousin that she 
must now make up for lost time and read. 

" Now that I have eyes to read again, I find 
it delightful, and I have a voracious appetite 
and a relish for food ; good, bad and indifferent, 
I am afraid, like a half-famished, shipwrecked 
wretch.'' 

She read all the new literature of the day, 
and eagerly inquired among all her friends 
what they commended. Byron's Don Juan had 
caused much talk, but' this did not attract 
her : — 

After what you have told me, and after all I hear from 
every good judge of Don Juan^ I never desire to see it. 
The only regret I feel upon the subject is that any pearls 
should be found, as I am told they may be found, in this 
intellectual dung-hill. How can the public allow this 
drunken, flagitious actor to appear before them, disgrac- 
ing genius and the taste of his country? In Scott's last 
tales there are all the signs of a master mind, but now 
and then all the spasms in the stomach, for which I pity 
him. I am glad he is going to try some new scheme, 
for he has, I think, exhausted every variety of Scotch 
character. 

It was not till early in 1820 that the memoirs 
of Mr. Edgeworth were completed. Having 



PARIS. 20I 

arranged that they should appear at Easter, 
Miss Edgeworth resolved to carry out a long- 
cherished plan, that of visiting Paris in com- 
pany with her two young sisters, Fanny and 
Harriet. At one time it seemed as if political 
events were too unsettled to make this project 
advisable, on which account she asked her good 
friend. Dr. Holland, of Knutsford, to propose 
some other plans. Very significant is the re- 
mark she makes: ''Observe that Fanny and I 
both prefer society, good society, even to fine 
landscapes or even to volcanoes.'' Finally 
Paris was pronounced safe, and they set out 
thither. It was on this occasion, when crossing 
to Holyhead, that she made her first acquaint- 
ance with a steamboat. She disliked what she 
called the "jigging motion,'' which, she said, 
was like the shake felt in a carriage when a pig 
is scratching himself behind the hind wheel 
while waiting at an Irish inn door. Her letters 
to her stepmother and sisters during this trip 
are frequent and detailed. At Paris they 
stayed some months, establishing themselves 
domestically in apartments in the Place du 
Palais Bourbon. '' Madame Maria Edgeworth 
et Mademoiselles ses sceurs'' ran their visiting- 
cards, which were soon left at the best Parisian 
houses. Many new friends were added to 
those they had previously made, and under the 



202 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

changed regime the connection of Miss Edge- 
worth with the Abbe Edgeworth became a 
passport to the homes of the old nobihty. The 
circumstance that Miss Edgeworth was a most 
accompUshed French scholar, speaking the lan- 
guage with as much ease as if it were her own, 
enabled her thoroughly to enter into and enjoy 
the society that was offered her. Her knowl- 
edge of French classic literature charmed her 
hosts and brought out all their best powers of 
conversation. Her ready sympathy and real 
interest won their hearts and induced many of 
them to tell her the sad stories of their advent- 
ures in the revolutionary days. But her inter- 
course was not confined to the aristocracy. 
Her hereditary taste for science brought her in 
contact with most of the distinguished scientific 
men of France, while literary society was, of 
course, thrown open to her. She noticed a 
great alteration in manners since their last 
visit : — 

I should observe that a great change has taken place : 
the men huddle together now in France as they used to 
do in England, talking politics with their backs to the 
women in a corner, or even in the middle of the room, 
without minding them in the least, and the ladies com- 
plain and look very disconsolate, and many ask " If this 
be Paris '^, " and others scream Ultra nonsense or Liberal 
nonsense to make themselves of consequence and to 
attract the attention of the gentlemen. In 1803, under 



PARIS, 203 

the First Consul's reign, when all freedom of discussion 
on public affairs was dangerous, and when all parties 
were glad to forget the horrors of the revolutionary days, 
conversation was limited to literary or scientific subjects, 
and was therefore much more agreeable to foreigners; 
now in 1820 the verb politiquer^ to talk politics, had 
been invented. 

As a foreigner Miss Edgeworth was enabled 
to visit at the houses of all factions, and she 
found much entertainment in hearing their opin- 
ions and diametrically opposite views. The 
Emigrants spoke of the Liberals with the bit- 
terest detestation as revolutionary monsters ; 
the .Liberals spoke of the Ultras as bigoted 
idiots. One of these said of a lady celebrated 
in 1803 as a brilliant talker: ^^ Autrefois elle 
avait de l^ esprit, mais elle est devenue Ultra, de- 
vote et bheT While not sympathizing with the 
insolence of either party, Miss Edgeworth ex- 
tracted some diversion and yet more moral 
reflection from all she saw. Writing to Dr. 
Holland after she had been an observer for 
some time, she says : — 

Upon the whole, after comparing the society in Paris 
and London, I far prefer the London society, and feel a 
much stronger desire to return to London than ever to 
revisit Paris. There is scarcely any new literature or 
any taste for old literature in Paris. In London the pro- 
duction of a single article in the Edinboro' or Qi^arterly 
Review, the lustre, however evanescent, it casts on the 



204 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

reviewer or the author, is a proof of the importance of 
literature in fashionable society. No such thing in Paris. 
Even the Parisian men of science, many of them equal, 
some superior to ours, are obliged or think themselves 
obliged to turn statesmen, and sorry statesmen they 
make. Everything in Parisian society is, as it were, 
tainted by politics, and the politicians themselves seem 
to be mere actors. I could forgive all their violence and 
the noise they make, screaming always all at a time, if 
they were really actuated by patriotism, but it seemed all 
for effect. A few exceptions, of course, to prove the 
rule. 

The more she saw of Parisian life, the more 
convinced she felt that the French required, if 
not a despot, at least an absolute monarch to 
reign over them. A brilliant and ready talker, 
Miss Edgeworth was also an able listener, and 
hence her society was much sought after, while 
the beauty, intelligence and excellent dressing 
of her sisters caused them also to be regarded 
as acquisitions in days when the Continent was 
not swamped with tourists, as it is now, and 
natives were therefore able to open their doors. 
A galaxy of brilliant and historical names pass 
across the pages of Miss Edgeworth's letters, 
and many a reminiscence she has preserved of 
them. Her accounts of the various parties to 
which they went are so vivacious and graphic 
that those for whom they were written must 
have felt as if they had been present too, and 



PARIS. 205 

had listened to all the talk in which science, 
politics, literature and nonsense were mixed in 
happy proportions. Here is an account of an 
evening at Cuvier's: — 

Prony, with his hair nearly in my plate, was telling me 
most entertaining anecdotes of Bonaparte ; and Cuvier, 
with his head nearly meeting him, talking as hard as he 
could, not striving to show learning or wit — quite the 
contrary ; frank, open-hearted genius, delighted to be 
together at home and at ease. This was the most flatter- 
ing and agreeable thing to me that could possibly be. 
Harriet was on the off side, and every now and then he 
turned to her in the midst of his anecdotes and made her 
so completely one of us ; and there was such a prodigious 
noise, nobody could hear but ourselves. Both Cuvier 
and Prony agreed that Bonaparte never could bear to 
have any but a decided answer. " One day," said Cuvier, 
" I nearly ruined myself by considering before I answered. 
He asked me, ^ Faut il introduire le sucre de bettetrave 
en France ? ' * Vabord^ Sire^ il faut songer si vos colo- 
nies ' ''Faut il avoir le sucre de bettetrave en France ? ' 

^ Mais, Sire, il faut examiner ' ' Bah I je le deman- 

derai ci Berthollet.'' " This despotic, laconic mode of 
insisting on learning everything in two words had its 
inconveniences. One day he asked the master of the 
woods at Fontainebleau, " How many acres of wood 
here?" The master, an honest man, stopped to recol- 
lect. " Bah ! " and the under-master came forward and 
said any number that came into his head. Bonaparte 
immediately took the mastership from the first and gave 
it to the second. ^^ Qu^arrivait ilf'' continued Prony; 
"the rogue who gave the guess answer was soon found 
cutting down and selling quantities of the trees, and 



206 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Bonaparte had to take the rangership from him and rein- 
state the honest hesitator." 

Many of her good stories had to be cut short 
or omitted for lack of time to tell them. *^ I 
find always that when I come to the end of my 
paper I have not told you half the entertaining 
things I had treasured up for you," she tells her 
stepmother. As in London, they lived in a 
constant whirl of gaiety. But Miss Edgeworth 
never forgot others amid the distinctions paid 
to herself. She was constantly thinking either 
what would please those left behind or what 
kind act she could do for those around her ; 
and if it were nothing more than helping other 
English visitors to gain a glimpse of French 
society, she set herself with all ardor to accom- 
plish it : — 

Next to the delight of seeing my sisters so justly 
appreciated and so happy at Paris, my greatest pleasure 
has been in the power of introducing people to each 
other, who longed to meet, but could not contrive it 
before. 

Social success did not turn her head : — 

Certainly no people can have seen more of the world 
than we have done in the last three months. By seeing 
the world I mean seeing varieties of characters and man- 
ners, and being behind the scenes of life in many different 
societies and families. The constant chorus of our moral 



PARIS, 207 

as we drive home together at night is, " How happy we 
are to be so fond of each other ! How happy we are to 
be independent of all we see here ! How happy that we 
have our dear home to return to at last ! " 

Her sisters told on their return how readily 
Miss Edgeworth would quit the company of the 
greatest people of the day, to superintend their 
dress or arrange some pleasure for them. '^ We 
often wondered," they said, ''what her admir- 
ers would say, after all the profound remarks 
and brilliant witticisms they had listened to, 
if they heard all her delightful nonsense with 
us." 

The sisters' gay life continued without inter- 
mission, only varied now and then by visits to 
French country houses. Among the most 
agreeable people they met Miss Edgeworth 
numbered some Russians and Poles. At the 
house of the Princess Potemkin she first made 
wondering acquaintance with, what is now for- 
tunately a matter of course, the more refined 
mode of serving dinner known as a la Russe, 
She met, too. Prince Rostopchin, the man who 
burned Moscow by first setting fire to his own 
house: — 

I never saw a more striking Calmuck countenance. 
From his conversation as well as from his actions I 
should think him a man of great strength of character. 
Speaking of the Russians, he compared their civilization 



208 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

to a naked man looking at himself in a gilt-framed mir- 
ror, and he told an anecdote that illustrated the perfunc- 
tory method of government • The Governor of Siberia 
lived at Petersburg and never went near his Government. 
One day the Emperor, in presence of this Governor and 
Rostopchin, was boasting of his far-sightedness. " Com- 
mend me," said Rostopchin, " to M. le Gouverneur, ;who 
sees so well from Petersburg to Siberia." 

At a breakfast at Camille Jordain^s were 
assembled three of the most distinguished of 
the party who called themselves Les Doctrin- 
aires, and alleged that they were more attached 
to measures than to men : — 

These three doctrinaires were Casimir Perier, Royer 
Coll^rd and Benjamin Constant, who is, I believe, of a 
more violent party. I do not like him at all ; his counte- 
nance, voice, manner and conversation are all disagreea- 
ble to me. He is a fair, " whithky " looking man, very 
near-sighted, with spectacles which seemed to pinch his 
nose. He pokes out his chin to keep his spectacles on, 
and yet looks over the top of his spectacles, squinching 
up his eyes, so that you cannot see your way into his 
mind. Then he speaks through his nose and with a lisp, 
strangely contrasting with the vehemence of his empha- 
sis. He does not give me any confidence in the sincerity 
of his patriotism, nor any high idea of his talents, though 
he seems to have a mighty high idea of them himself. 
He has been well called Le Heros des Brochures. We 
sat beside one another, and I think felt a mutual antipa- 
thy. On the other side of me was Royer Collard, suffer- 
ing with toothache and swelled face ; but notwithstand- 
ing the distortion of the swelling, the natural expression 



AT GENEVA. 209 

of his countenance and the strength and sincerity of his 
soul made their way, and the frankness of his character 
and plain superiority of his talents were manifest in five 
minutes' conversation. 

In June Miss Edgeworth and her sisters left 
Paris for a tour in Switzerland, visiting their 
friends the Moilliets, who lived at Pregny, near 
Geneva. Their house, which had formerly 
belonged to Josephine, commanded a superb 
view of the lake and of Mont Blanc. It was 
a surprise to Miss Edgeworth to find how much 
she was impressed with the beauty of the 
scenery about her : — 

I did not conceive it possible that I should feel so 
much pleasure from the beauties of nature as I have 
done since I came to this country. The first moment 
when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an era in my life — 
a new idea, a new feeling, standing alone in the mind. 

Geneva was at that time enjoying what has 
been termed its Augustan age. An unusual 
number of distinguished persons resided there, 
and it was besides largely resorted to by emi- 
nent men and women from all lands, most of 
whom Miss Edgeworth met at the house of her 
host. Besides, Monsieur Pictet and Monsieur 
Dumont, these old, faithful friends, were also 
domiciled at Geneva, and strove to do the 
honors of the place. Among temporary resi- 
dents were such men and women as Dr. and 



2IO MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

Mrs. Marcet, Arago, De CandoUe, the botanist, 
Freiherr von Stein, Madame Necker de Saus- 
sure, and Sismondi. They also met Bonstetten, 
the poet Gray's youthful friend, then an old 
man, who spoke with enthusiasm of Madame 
de Stael. 

This mixture of persons from all parts of 
the world gave a piquancy to the reunions that 
were held at Geneva. Sometimes the guests 
met in the evening at a house in town, some- 
times at breakfast in the different country 
villas in all the freshness of the sweet Swiss 
morning, sometimes by moonlight on lawns 
sloping down to the lake; when they would 
sit under trees or stroll about, while tea and 
ices and the famous varieties of Geneva cakes 
were handed round. It was at one of these 
evening assemblies that Miss Edgeworth, while 
talking to De Candolle in her most brilliant 
strain, attracted a crowd five deep. 

Several short excursions into the lower 
Alpine regions were made from Geneva by 
the sisters and their friends ; but though Miss 
Edgeworth enjoyed the beauties of nature 
beyond her expectations, she yet, as before in 
her letters, mentions persons and matters 
of intellectual interest more frequently than 
scenery. It was a keen gratification to her 
that M. Dumont spoke well of the now pub- 
lished memoirs. She cared more for this than 



MADAME DE STAEL. 211 

for the many compliments that were paid to 
herself, only a few of which she modestly 
records, and then only because she knows 
they will please the dear ones at home. At 
Coppet the party breakfasted with M. de Stael, 
who showed them all the rooms once inhabited 
by his mother, which Miss Edgeworth '^ could 
not regard as common rooms; they have a 
classical power over the mind/' M. de Stael 
told her — 

That his mother never gave any work to the public in 
the form in which she had originally composed it. She 
changed the arrangement and expression of her thoughts 
with such facility, and was so little attached to her own 
first views of the subject, that often a work was com- 
pletely remodeled by her while passing through the 
press. Her father disliked to see her make any formal 
preparation for writing when she was young, so that she 
used to write often on the corner of the chimney-piece 
or on a pasteboard held in her hand, and always in the 
room with others, for her father could not bear her to 
be out of the room, and this habit of writing without 
preparation she preserved ever afterwards. 

M. de Stael told me of a curious interview he had 
with Bonaparte when he was enraged with his mother, 
who had published remarks on his government, conclud- 
ing with ^'' Ek bien! vous avez raison aussi, Je conqois 
qu'unfils doit toujo74,rs faire la defense de sa 7nere^ mais 
enfin^ si monsieur veut ecrire des libelles^ il faut aller en 
Angleterre, Ou bien sHl cherche la gloire c'^est en Angle- 
terre quHl faut aller, Cest V Angleterre^ ou la France 
— // n^y a que ces deux pays en Europe — dans le 
monde^'^ 



212 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

During her absence abroad Miss Edgeworth 
had revised the manuscript of the latter portion 
of Rosamoitd and sent it home to press. At 
the eleventh hour her publisher discovered 
that there was not enough material to complete 
two volumes, and urged her to supply more 
copy without delay. '^ I was a little provoked," 
she writes on first hearing the news, *' but this 
feeling lasted but a moment, and my mind 
fixed on what is to be done. It is by no means 
necessary for me to be at home or in any 
particular place to invent or to write." In- 
stantly she set to work, and in the midst of all 
social attractions and distractions around her 
she wrote the two additional chapters called 
The Bracelet of Memory and Blind Kate. 

Late in October the Misses Edgeworth left 
Switzerland for Paris, visiting Lyons on their 
way. The town had a special interest for 
Miss Edgeworth because of her father's early 
residence there. By the end of October they 
were once more settled at Paris in a floor to 
themselves, with a valet de place and a femme 
de chambre. Another gay three months fol- 
lowed, seeing old friends and making new 
ones : — 

We have seen Mademoiselle Mars twice, or thrice 
rather, in the Mariage de Figaro^ and in the little pieces 
of Le jaloux sans amour and La jeunesse de Henri 



HOME AGAIN. 213 

Cinq^ and admire her exceedingly. En petit comite the 
other night at the Duchesse d'Escars, a discussion took 
place between the Duchesse de la Force, Marmont and 
Pozzo di Borgo on the bon et mauvais ton of different 
expressions ; bonne societe is an expression bourgeoise. 
You may say bonne co7npagnie or la haute societe. 
" Viola des nuances^^'' as Madame d'Escars said. Such 
a wonderful jabbering as these grandees made about 
these small matters ! It puts me in mind of a conversa- 
tion in the World on good company, which we all used 
to admire. 

In December the travellers were back again 
in London, but several more visits were paid 
before they returned to Ireland. Thus they 
halted at Clifton to see Miss Edgeworth's 
sister Emmeline, who was married there, and 
stayed at Bowood, Easton Grey, Badminton 
and various other houses, in all of which they 
met with a warm welcome. Beloved Aunt 
Ruxton, too, had to be seen on the way home. 
It was March before the sisters reached Edge- 
worthstown, after not quite a year's absence ; 
a year that seemed to Miss Edgeworth like a 
delightful dream, full of Alps and glaciers and 
cascades and Mont Blanc, and "troops of 
acquaintances in splendid succession and vision- 
ary confusion'' — a dream of which the sober 
certainty of happiness remained, assuring her 
that all that had passed had been no dream, 
but a reality. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE MEMOIRS PUBLISHED. 1 82 1 TO 1825. 

The Memoirs of Richard Love II Edge worth 
had been published during Miss Edgeworth's 
stay on the Continent. After all the anxiety 
she had felt while preparing the work for the 
press, she was now able to write to her friends 
at home: — 

You would scarcely believe, my dear friends, the calm 
of mind and the sort of satisfied resignation I feel as to 
my father's life. I suppose the two years of doubt and 
extreme anxiety that I felt exhausted all my power of 
doubting. I know that I have done my very best, I 
know that I have done my duty, and I firmly believe that 
if my dear father could see the whole, he would be 
satisfied with what I have done. 

Still she was sensitive to what those said 
who had known and loved him ; and though 
Mrs. Ruxton had gone through the manuscript, 
it was a satisfaction to her to hear that on 
seeing the work in print she had not altered 
her views on it. She wrote : — 

The irremediable words once past the press, I knew 
that the happiness of my life was at stake. Even if all 



MR, EDGEWORTH'S MEMOIRS, 21 5 

the rest of the world had praised it and you had been 
dissatisfied, how miserable I should have been ! 

The world was not so lenient in its criticism. 
It failed to see what right the work had to 
exist ; it acquiesced in what Miss Edge worth 
had felt, that she of all persons was the least 
fitted to be the biographer of the man she so 
blindly adored. 

The first volume is entirely Mr. Edgeworth's 
own writing, the second is hers ; she takes up 
the narrative on his final removal to Ireland. 
Although written in his heavy-footed, stilted 
style, that broke forth now and again into 
comic pomposity, of the two his is the more 
entertaining, for he tells many stories that do 
not concern himself alone. Thus, though he is 
by no means a graphic writer, we can gather 
from his pages some notion of the little provin- 
cial Mutual Admiration Society that was gath- 
ered together at Lichfield under the aegis of 
Dr. Darwin ; of the nature of society in Ireland 
during his youth ; of the state of mechanical 
science in England. But there is also much 
that is puerile, some few things that are in bad 
taste ; and the book contains, besides, some 
really careless blunders with regard to events 
for which the data were within the reach of all. 
In Miss Edgeworth's portion it is easily seen 
that she does not write freely. Even her style, 



2l6 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

usually more flexible and spontaneous, has 
caught a reflection from his, while the position 
in which she stood to the object of her work 
hindered her from exercising that keen, critical 
judgment which she possessed, and which would 
certainly have come to the fore had the subject 
of her work been a stranger to her. Only while 
writing about such events as do not imme- 
diately deal with her father is she herself. 
Probably the very anxiety she felt regarding 
the book was a dim, unformulated conscious- 
ness that she had not made it all she desired. 
The press spoke but coolly. The Quarterly 
Review published a somewhat savage article ; 
indeed, with so much bitterness was it written, 
that though one is at all times inclined to dep- 
recate the theory of personal enmity, so dear to 
the wounded vanity of authors, it does suggest 
the possibility of having been the outcome of 
malice. But more likely still is it that Mr. 
Edgeworth's boastful egotism so irritated the 
writer that he wrote what certainly could not 
fail to be cruelly wounding to a family who 
regarded their hero as perfect in all respects. 
After every allowance has been made for this 
acrimonious tone (no rare feature in either of 
the quarterlies in the days of their bumptious 
youth), the attack certainly contained much 
that was warranted by circumstances. The 



MR, EDGEWORTH'S MEMOIRS. 217 

writer had not impugned thoughtlessly or igno- 
rantly. He put a sure finger on the contradic- 
tions and inaccuracies that occurred in Mr. 
Edgeworth's narrative, and he gave chapter 
and verse for his objections. Such criticism, 
though severe, could not be called wholly 
unjust. The article, however, raised a perfect 
storm of indignation among the Edgeworths' 
friends. Some called it wicked, others only 
denounced it as silly. Miss Edgeworth, being 
in France, was out of the way of seeing the 
Quarterlyy and after what she had heard, she 
simply and wisely resolved never to read it. 
Indeed, she took the whole matter more phil- 
osophically than her friends, and hastened to 
beg her dearest Aunt Ruxton never to lose 
another night's sleep or another moment's 
thought on the Quarterly Review, And cer- 
tainly, whatever the reviewers might say. Miss 
Edgeworth had the satisfaction before the year 
was out of preparing a second edition, and in 
her seventy-seventh year a third was called for. 
For this third edition she re-wrote nearly the 
whole of her portion. With her habitual mod- 
esty she assumed that it was her part of the 
work that had been found long and heavy. 
Nothing is more touching, more lovable, than 
the modesty of this woman, so lauded, honored 
and praised by all her generation that she could 



2l8 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

not remain ignorant of her fame. But simplic- 
ity was the very foundation of her character, 
and the woman always went before the author. 
On her return from France Miss Edgeworth 
resumed the quiet, dearly-loved routine of home 
life. She was always glad to get home again, 
even now, and to be with the stepmother, sis- 
ters and brothers she loved so tenderly. Here 
is a pretty picture of the daily course of their 
existence : — 

So you like to hear of all our little doings ; so I will 
tell you that, about eight o'clock, Fanny being by that 
time up and dressed, and at her little table, Harriet comes 
and reads to me Madame de Sevign^'s letters, of which I 
never tire ; and I almost envy Fanny and Harriet the 
pleasure of reading them for the first time. After break- 
fast I take my little table into Lucy's room and write 
there for an hour : she likes to have me in her room, 
though she only hears the scribble, scribble ; she is gen- 
erally reading at that hour or doing Margaret's delight 
— algebra. I am doing the sequel to Frank, Walking, 
reading and talking fill the rest of the day. I do not 
read much ; it tires my eyes, and I have not yet finished 
the Life of Wesley, I think it a most curious, entertain- 
ing and instructive book. A life of Pitt by the Bishop 
of Winchester is coming out; he wrote to Murray about 
it, who asked his friends, "Who is George Winton, who 
writes to me about publishing Pitt's life ? " 

Soon after his return from enforced exile 
Lovell Edgeworth had established a school at 
Edgeworthstown, after a plan proposed by his 



HOME LIFE, 219 

father, in which boys of all classes and creeds 
should be educated together. It succeeded ad- 
mirably, and was a source of interest and occu- 
pation not only to its founder, but to Miss 
Edgeworth, who always threw herself with ardor 
into everything that interested those about her. 
The lives of women are rarely eventful, and 
Miss Edgeworth's was perhaps less so than that 
of most. Her existence moved in the quiet 
circle of home, and like most women she was 
much and often occupied with what she happily 
calls ^' the necessary business of life, which 
must be done behind the scenes.'' The monot- 
ony of her existence was only broken by visits 
to and from friends, and by receiving letters, 
events in those days of few newspapers, when 
letters were longer, more detailed than they 
are now, when they were sent round to a whole 
circle for perusal, when those who were abroad 
penned long descriptions of all they saw in what 
are now beaten tracks familiar to most persons 
as Piccadilly. The even course of life at Edge- 
worthstown certainly did not furnish much mate- 
rial for letters except to those interested in the 
well-being of the numerous members of the 
household, and Miss Edgeworth's are mostly 
filled with domestic details of this nature. In 
August, 1 82 1, she writes : — 

What do you think is my employment out of doors, 



220 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

and what it has been this week past ? My garden ? No 
such elegant thing ; but making a gutter ! a sewer and a 
pathway in the street of Edgeworthstown ; and I do de- 
clare I am as much interested about it as I ever was in 
writing anything in my life. We have never here yet 
found it necessary to have recourse to public contribution 
for the poor, but it is necessary to give some assistance 
to the laboring class ; and I find that making the said 
gutter and pathway will employ twenty men for three 
weeks. 

In the late autumn she yielded to the invita- 
tions of her many English friends to spend 
some time among them. She took with her 
her former travelling companions, for without 
some of her family Miss Edgeworth felt as if 
she had left too many pieces of herself behind, 
and could not enjoy anything thoroughly. Once 
more the sisters passed some interesting and 
agreeable months, visiting at the houses of 
various friends ; and during the spring and 
winter months hiring a house of their own in 
London, where they entertained and were enter- 
tained. They lived in a whirl of town dissipa- 
tion, knowing six different and totally inde- 
pendent sets : *' scientific, literary, political, trav- 
elled, artist, and the fine fashionable of various 
shades.'' Miss Edgeworth found the different 
styles of conversation very entertaining, and 
sent home bright pictures of the various things 
she saw and heard. 



LONDON, 221 

In the hurried life we have led for some weeks past, 
and among the great variety of illustrious and foolish 
people we have seen pass in rapid panoramas before us, 
some remain forever fixed in the memory and some few 
touch the heart. 

At one house Mrs. Somerville was met and 
thus described : — 

Mrs. Somerville — little, slightly made, fair hair, pink 
color; small, gray, round, intelligent, smiling eyes; very 
pleasing countenance ; remarkably soft voice, strong but 
well-bred Scotch accent; timid, not disqualifying timid, 
but naturally modest, yet with a degree of self-possession 
through it which prevents her being in the least awkward, 
and gives her all the advantages of her understanding, at 
the same time that it adds a prepossessing charm to her 
manner and takes off all dread of her superior scientific 
learning. 

Some days were happily spent visiting Mr. 
Ricardo, with whose fairness in argument Miss 
Edgeworth was struck. While her sisters 
danced, acted charades or played round games, 
Miss Edgeworth conversed with the elders of 
the company ; but she was ever ready to turn 
from grave to gay, and often the first to impro- 
vise a masquerade or to arrange an impromptu 
charade. Wherever there was laughter and 
young people, there she was a favorite and 
sought-for companion. Her life during these 
months in England certainly did not lack out- 



222 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

ward variety, and she was happy for herself, and 
yet happier because she saw her sisters pleased 
and beloved. A few extracts from her London 
letters best reflect her life : — 

Yesterday we went, the moment we had swallowed our 
breakfast, by appointment to Newgate. The private door 
opened at sight of our tickets, and the great doors and 
the little doors, and the thick doors and doors of all sorts, 
were unbolted and unlocked, and on we went through 
dreary but clean passages, till we came to a room where 
rows of empty benches fronted us, and a table, on which 
lay a large Bible. Several ladies and gentlemen entered 
and took their seats on benches at either side of the table, 
in silence. 

Enter Mrs. Fry in a drab-colored silk cloak, and plain, 
borderless Quaker cap ; a most benevolent countenance 
— Guido Madonna face — calm, benign. "I must make 
an inquiry: Is Maria Edgeworth here, and where .'^" I 
went forward : she bade us come and sit beside her. Her 
first smile as she looked upon me I can never forget. 
The prisoners came in, and in an orderly manner ranged 
themselves on the benches. All quite clean faces, hair, 
caps and hands. On a very low bench in front little chil- 
dren were seated and settled by their mothers. Almost 
all these women, about thirty, were under sentence of 
transportation; some few only were there for imprison- 
ment. One who did not appear was under sentence of 
death — frequently women when sentenced to death 
became ill and unable to attend Mrs. Fry ; the others 
came regularly and voluntarily. 

She opened the Bible and read in the most sweetly sol- 
emn, sedate voice I ever heard, slowly and distinctly, 
without anything in the manner that could distract atten- 



LONDON, 223 

tion from the matter. Sometimes she paused to explain, 
which she did with great judgment, addressing the con- 
victs : " /^^ have felt ; w^ are convinced." They were 
very attentive, unexpectedly interested, I thought, in all 
she said, and touched by her manner. There was noth- 
ing put on in their countenances, not any appearance of 
hypocrisy. I studied their countenances carefully, but I 
could not see any which, without knowing to whom they 
belonged, I should have decided was bad; yet Mrs. Fry 
assured me that all of those women had been of the worst 
sort. She confirmed what we have read and heard, that it 
was by their love of their children that she first obtained 
influence over these abandoned women. When she first 
took notice of one or two of their fine children, the 
mothers said that if she could but save their children 
from the misery they had gone through in vice, they 
would do anything she bid them. And when they saw 
the change made in their children by her schooling, they 
begged to attend themselves. I could not have conceived 
that the love of their children could have remained so 
strong in hearts in which every other feeling of virtue had 
so long been dead. The Vicar of Wakefield's sermon in 
prison is, it seems, founded on a deep and true knowledge 
of human nature; the spark of good is often smothered, 
never wholly extinguished. Mrs. Fry often says an 
extempore prayer, but this day she was quite silent, while 
she covered her face with her hands for some minutes ; 
the women were perfectly silent with their eyes fixed upon 
her, and when she said, " You may go," they went away 
slowly. The children sat quite still the whole time ; when 
one leaned, her mother behind sat her upright. Mrs. Fry 
told us that the dividing the women into classes has been 
of the greatest advantage, and putting them under the 
care of monitors. There is some little pecuniary advan- 



224 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

tage attached to the office of monitor, which makes them 
emulous to obtain it. We went through the female wards 
with Mrs. Fry, and saw the women at various works, 
knitting, rug-making, etc. They have done a great deal 
of needlework very neatly, and some very ingenious. 
When I expressed my foolish wonder at this to Mrs. 
Fry's sister, she replied, ^''We have to do, recollect, 
ma'am, not with fools, but with rogues. " 

******* 

Far from being disappointed with the sight of what 
Mrs. Fry has effected, I was delighted. We emerged 
again from the thick, dark, silent walls of Newgate to the 
bustling city, and thence to the elegant part of the town ; 
and before we had time to arrange our ideas, and while 
the mild Quaker face and voice, and wonderful resolution 
and successful exertion of this admirable woman, were 
fresh in our minds, morning visitors flowed in and com- 
mon life again went on. 

At Almack's, that exclusive paradise of fash- 
ion to which they v^ere admitted, Lord London- 
derry came up and talked to Miss Edgeworth 
about Castle Rackrent and Ireland generally. 
He expressed himself as having been dying 
with impatience to be introduced to her. She 
nai'vely says : — 

It surprised me very much to perceive the rapidity 
with which a minister's having talked to a person spread 
through the room. Everybody I met afterwards that 
night and the next day observed to me that they had 
seen Lord Londonderry talking to me a great while. 

Mrs. Siddons was among the persons whose 
acquaintance they formed. 



LONDON. 225 

She gave us the history of her first acting of Lady 
Macbeth, and of her resolving, in the sleep scene, to lay 
down the candlestick, contrary to the precedent of Mrs. 
Pritchard and all the traditions, before she began to wash 
her hands and say, " Out, vile spot ! " Sheridan knocked 
violently at her door during the five minutes she had 
desired to have entirely to herself to compose her spirits 
before the play began. He burst in and prophesied that 
she would ruin herself forever if she persevered in this 
resolution to lay down the candlestick ! She persisted, 
however, in her resolution, succeeded, was applauded, 
and Sheridan begged her pardon. She described well 
the awe she felt, and the power of the excitement given 
to her by the sight of Burke, Fox, Sheridan and Sir 
Joshua Reynolds in the pit. 

Morning, dinner, evening parties^ succeeded 
one another. Miss Edgeworth had not even 
time to note them. In June (1822) the sisters 
at last returned home. Miss Edgeworth by no 
means loth to resume the thread of her do- 
mestic affairs. She set to w^ork upon the 
Sequel to Harry and Lucy^ which was one 
among the duty-tasks she deemed it right to 
do, because her father had wished it to be com- 
pleted. ^^I could never be easy writing any- 
thing for my own amusement till I had done 
this, which I know my father wished to have 
finished.'' 

Portions of Ireland were suffering from famine 
that summer. The deplorable state of the south 
in especial aroused all Miss Edgeworth's sym- 



226 MARIA EDGEWORTH. '■ 

pathies. But she feared that as one source of 
grievance was removed another would spring up. 

The minds bent on mischief are unconquered. In fact 
it is almost the avowed object of the people to drive the 
remaining resident gentry from the country. I do not 
think the hatred is between Protestant and CathoHc, but 
between landlord and tenant. I should say, between 
tenant and landlord. The landlords are the greatest 
sufferers. Observe, what I have said applies only to the 
south. The north is in good condition. The neighbor- 
hood of Scotland and imported grafted habits of industry 
have made that part of Ireland almost Scotch. Our ten- 
antry pay comparatively well. 

She proceeded to show, however, that they 
were all at least a year behind-hand with their 
rent, and that Lovell let them pay just when 
they liked, not insisting upon a rent-day. 

In the spring of 1823 Miss Edgeworth and 
her sisters, Sophy and Harriet, paid some 
visits in Scotland. At Edinburgh they settled 
into lodgings near their friends, the Alisons; 
but the very first evening was spent with 
Scott, who desired that they should hear some 
Highland boat-songs at his house. Of this 
introduction to Scott, and the first evening 
spent with him, Miss Edgeworth penned a 
most vivid account. 

The next day Scott insisted on showing 
them the sights of Edinburgh, about whose 
beauties he was enthusiastic. 



SII^ WALTER SCOTT. 22J 

His conversation all the time better than anything we 
could see, full of apropos anecdote, historic, serious or 
comic, just as occasion called for it, and all with a 
bonhommie and an ease that made us forget it was any- 
trouble even to his lameness to mount flights of eternal 
stairs. 

Indeed, Scott almost took forcible posses- 
sion of the Misses Edgeworth, so anxious was 
he to show honor to the author whom he 
regarded as the most distinguished of contem- 
porary novelists. 

How Walter Scott can find time to write all he writes, 
I cannot conceive. He appears to have nothing to 
think of but to be amusing, and he never tires, though 
he is so entertaining. He far surpasses my expectations. 

Their delight in each other's society was 
mutual. Scott wrote to a friend at the 
time : — 

I have very little news to send you. Miss Edgeworth 
is at present the great lioness of Edinburgh, and a very 
nice lioness. She is full of fun and spirit; a little slight 
figure, very active in her motions, very good-humored 
and full of enthusiasm. 

Many of the "Northern Lights'' were 
absent at the time of Miss Edgeworth's visit, 
but she made the acquaintance of Jeffrey, 
renewed many old friendships and formed new 
ties. It was a feature of Miss Edgeworth, 
as it had been of her father, and it is one 



228 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

that speaks eloquently in favor of their char- 
acters, that they never lost a friend or dropped 
connection with those in whom they had once 
been interested. Friends once made were 
friends for life, and were sure of a warm 
welcome if they came to Ireland, or of a ready 
answer to any call they might make upon time 
or heart. Miss Edgeworth's amiable character 
won for her a far larger circle of friends than 
her father ever possessed ; she had none of 
those angles in her character which repelled 
so many from him. Wherever she went she 
expressed her gratified surprise at the cordiality 
which people showed towards her, and she met 
no less of it in Scotland than elsewhere. 

After a few weeks spent at Edinburgh 
William Edgeworth joined his sisters in a tour 
through the Highlands. Loch Katrine had, 
of course, special interest to her because of 
its connection with Scott. She does not think 
it more beautiful than Killarney: *'But where 
is the lake of our own or any other times that 
has such delightful power over the imagination 
by the recollection it raises.'*'' 

This Highland tour afforded her great pleas- 
ure. **The ^felicity-hunters' have found more 
felicity than such hunters usually meet with." 
Unfortunately it ended badly. She caught 
cold, and was taken ill with a very severe 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, 229 

attack of erysipelas that laid her up for ten 
days in a small Scotch inn. She had been 
ailing more or less for some months past, and 
this attack was probably only a climax. As 
soon as she could move, some friends took her 
into their house and nursed her tenderly, but 
she was weak for some time after. But almost 
before it was true, she tells her stepmother 
that she is off the invalid list. Scott was 
anxious to have her at Abbotsford, and 
promised to nurse her carefully. At the end 
of July she and her sisters yielded to his 
friendly entreaties, and spent a fortnight with 
him in his home. Lockhart speaks of the 
time of her visit as one of the happiest in 
Scott's life. Until the Misses Edgeworth 
arrived the season had been wet. It was a 
great joy to Sir Walter that with her appear- 
ance summer appeared too. On his expressing 
this, Miss Sophy Edgeworth mentioned the 
Irish tune, " You've brought the summer with 
you," and repeated the first line of the words 
Moore had adapted to it. '' How pretty ! " 
said Sir Walter ; *^ Moore's the man for songs. 
Campbell can write an ode and I can write a 
ballad, but Moore beats us all at a song." 

Miss Edgeworth was charmed with Scott and 
his home, with the excursions he took with them, 
with the drives she had with him in his little 



230 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

carriage, during which the flow of his anecdotes, 
wit and wisdom never ceased. His joyous 
manner and life of mind, his looks of fond pride 
in his children, the pleasantness, of his easy- 
manners, his keen sense of humor, enchanted 
her. She also liked Lady Scott, a liking that 
was returned. Miss Edgeworth considered her 

A most kind-hearted, hospitable person, who had much 
more sense and more knowledge of character and dis- 
crimination than many of those who ridiculed her. I 
know I never can forget her kindness to me when I was 
ill at Abbotsford. Her last words at parting were: 
" God bless you ! we shall never meet again." At that 
time it was much more likely that I should have died, I 
thought, than she. 

This was not Miss Edgeworth's first visit to 
Edinburgh, and Lady Scott expressed her sur- 
prise that Sir Walter and she had not met 
earlier. "Why,'' said Sir Walter, with one of 
his queer looks, "you forget, my dear. Miss 
Edgeworth was not a lion then, and my mane, 
you know, was not grown at all.'' 

Sir Walter was as sorry to part with his 
guests as Miss Edgeworth was to go, but she 
felt that the longer she lingered the more 
difficult it would be to depart. 

After paying some more Scotch visits and a 
few Irish ones, the Misses Edgeworth returned 
home in September, and life once more became 



HOME LIFE, 231 

uneventful. Even to Mrs, Ruxton there was 
nothing to tell. 

It is a long time since I have written to you, always 
waiting a day longer for somebody's coming or going, or 
sailing or launching. You ask what I am doing. Noth- 
ing but reading and idling, and paving a gutter and yard 
to Honora's pig-sty and school-house. What have I 
been reading? The Siege of Valencia^ by Mrs. He- 
mans, which is an hour too long, but it contains some 
of the most beautiful poetry I have read for years. 

Sickness, deaths, marriages and births were 
of frequent occurrence in that large family. 
Miss Edgeworth's heart was capacious and could 
answer to all calls made upon it. Whether 
it was to rejoice with those that rejoiced, or to 
weep with those that wept, she always responded. 

It is the condition, the doom of advancing, advanced 
age, to see friend after friend go, for so much it detaches 
one from life ; yet it still more makes us value the friends 
we have left. And continually, at every fresh blow, I 
really wonder^ and am thankful, most truly thankful, that 
I have so many, so much left. 

A young sister who had ailed for years, and 
was obliged to lie flat on a couch, was a con- 
stant source of solicitude. What could be done 
to divert her, to comfort her, or alleviate her 
sufferings, was always in Miss Edgeworth's 
mind. Lucy's name often occurs in her letters, 
and whenever she is absent and there is any- 



232 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

thing especially amusing to relate, the letter is 
always addressed to her. In 1824 Miss Edge- 
worth lost her sister, Mrs. Beddoes. A few 
months before, Sophy was married to a Captain 
Fox. She was grieved to lose this sister and the 
marriage affected her deeply. 

Though Miss Edgeworth was now past fifty, 
she showed neither bodily nor mental signs of 
advancing years. Indeed, mentally she was 
as fresh and as young as ever, and her letters 
reflect the same pleasure in life and all it offers 
that they evinced throughout. Only on New 
Year's day, which was also her birthday, does 
she indulge in any reflections concerning the 
flight of time. Here is a letter written in 
1825 : — 

A happy new year to you, my dearest aunt, to you to 
whom I now look, as much as I can to any one now 
living, for the rays of pleasure that I expect to gild my 
bright evening of life. As we advance in life, we 
become more curious, more fastidious in gilding and 
gilders. We find to our cost that all that glitters is 
not gold, and your every-day bungling carvers and 
gilders will not do. Our evening gilders must be more 
skillful than those who flashed and daubed away in the 
morning of life, and gilt with any tinsel the weather- 
cock for the morning sun. You may perceive, my dear 
aunt, by my having got so finely to the weathercock 
and the rising sun, that I am out of the hands of my 
dear apothecaries, and playing away again with a super- 
fluity of life. (N. B. — I am surprisingly prudent.) 



HOME LIFE. 233 

Honora's cough has almost subsided, and Lucy can 
sit upright the greater part of the day. " God bless the 
mark!" as Molly Bristow would say, if she heard me; 
" don't be bragging." 

Not many days later, when her stepmother 
and some friends, ''poor souls and full-dress 
bodies,'' had gone out to dinner, she penned 
another long letter to the same correspondent, 
a letter delightfully fresh in tone and full of 
her personality : — 

In a few days I trust — you know I am a great truster 
— you will receive a packet franked by Lord Bathurst, 
containing only a little pocket-book — Friendship's Offer- 
ing for 1825, dizened out. I fear you will think it too 
fine for your taste, but there is in it, as you will find, the 
old Mental Thermometer^ which was once a favorite of 
yours. You will wonder how it came there. Simply 
thus : Last autumn came by the coach a parcel contain- 
ing just such a book as this for last year, and a letter 
from Mr. Lupton Relfe — a foreigner settled in London — 
and he prayed in most polite bookseller strain that I 
would look over my portfolio for some trifle for this 
book for 1825. I might have looked over "my port- 
folio " till doomsday, as I have not an unpublished 
scrap, except Taken for Granted. But I recollected 
the Mental Thermometer^ and that it had never been 
oi^t^ except in the Irish Farmer'' s fournal^ not known 
in England. So I routed in the garret, under pyramids 
of old newspapers, with my mother's prognostics that 
I never should find it, and loud prophecies that I should 
catch my death, which I did not ; but dirty and dusty 
and cobwebby, I came forth, after two hours' groveling, 



234 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

with my object in my hand; cut it out, added a few 
lines of new end to it, and packed it off to Lupton 
Relfe, telling him that it was an old thing written when 
I was sixteen. Weeks elapsed, and I heard no more, 
when there came a letter exuberant in gratitude, and 
sending a parcel containing six copies of the new 
memorandum-book, and a most beautiful twelfth edition 
of Scott's poetical works, bound in the most elegant 
manner, and with most beautifully engraved frontis- 
pieces and vignettes, and a ;^5 note. I was quite 
ashamed — but I have done all I could for him by 
giving the Friendship'' s Offering to all the fine people 
I could think of. The set of Scott's works made a 
nice New Year's gift for Harriet; she had seen this 
edition at Edinburgh and particularly wished for it. 
The £^ note I have sent to Harriet Beaufort to be 
laid out in books for Fanny Stewart. Little did I think 
the poor old Thermometer would give me so much 
pleasure. Here comes the carriage rolling round. I 
feel guilty. What will my mother say to me — so long 
a letter at this time of night .^^ Yours affectionately, in 
all the haste of guilt, conscience-stricken ; that is, found 
out. 

No: all safe, all innocent — because not found out , 
Finis. 

By the author of Moral Tales and Practical Edu- 
cation, 

In 1825 Scott paid his long-promised visit 
to Edgeworthstown. He came in August, 
bringing with him his daughter, Lockhart and 
Mr, Crampton, a surgeon friend of the Edge- 
worths, " who equally gratified both the novel- 



S/J^ WALTER SCOTT. 235 

ists by breaking the toils of his great practice 
to witness their meeting on his native soil/' 
Miss Edgeworth writes: — 

I am glad that kind Crampton had the reward of this 
journey; though frequently hid from each other by 
clouds of dust in their open carriage, they had, as they 
told us, never ceased talking They like each other as 
much as two men of so much genius and so much benev- 
olence should, and we rejoice to be the bond of union. 

jd». Alt A^ jAl S3£, ^£. 

tffc Tfr Tpr ^ Tpr Tfr 

Sir Walter delights the heart of every creature who 
sees, hears and knows him. He is most benignant as 
well as most entertaining ; the noblest and the gentlest 
of lions, and his face, especially the lower part of it, is 
excessively like a lion ; he and Mr. Crampton and Mr. 
Jephson were delighted together. The school band after 
dinner by moonlight playing Scotch tunes, and the boys 
at leap-frog, delighted Sir Walter. Next day we went to 
the school for a very short time and saw a little of every- 
thing, and a most favorable impression was left. It 
being Saturday, religious instruction was going on when 
we went in. Catholics with their priests in one room; 
Protestants with Mr. Keating in the other. More 
delightful conversation I have seldom in my life heard 
than we have been blessed with these three days. What 
a touch of sorrow must mix with the pleasures of all who 
have had great losses. Lovell, my mother and I, at 
twelve o'clock at night, joined in exclaiming, " How 
delightful ! O ! that he had lived to see and hear this ! " 

Of the details of this visit, Lockhart, in his 
Life of Scotty has furnished an account. He 
draws attention to the curious coincidence that 
Goldsmith and Maria Edgeworth should both 



236 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

have derived their early love and knowledge 
of Irish character from the same district, 
Pallesmore being indeed the property of the 
Edgeworths. 

After a week's stay Sir Walter and his 
friends departed to visit Killarney ; and Miss 
Edgeworth, her sister Harriet and brother Wil- 
liam were easily persuaded to be of the party. 
The journey was a delightful one to all con- 
cerned ; and though a few little mishaps 
occurred, such as the difficulties of finding 
post-horses to convey so large a party, every- 
thing was turned to enjoyment. Sir Walter 
and Miss Edgeworth shared this faculty of 
looking on the bright side of the necessary 
discomforts of a journey, and extracting amuse- 
ment from every incident — a faculty for want 
of which so many travellers fail to enjoy them- 
selves. They charmed all with whom they 
came in contact, down to the very boatman 
who rowed them on the lake of Killarney, and 
who, rowing Lord Macaulay twenty years after- 
wards, told him that the circumstance had 
made him amends for missing a hanging that 
day ! On Sir Walter Scott's birthday a large 
gathering of the clans Edgeworth and Scott 
took place at Dublin. *^ Sir Walter's health 
was drunk with more feeling than gaiety," and 
on that same evening he and Miss Edgeworth 
parted, never to meet again. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1826 TO 1834. 

It was in 1825 that the second part of Harry 
and Lucy was published, completing the labors 
planned for Miss Edgeworth by her father. 
The good reception it met with caused her to 
contemplate writing some more short tales, but 
she missed the guiding friend that had so long 
directed her. A story called Taken for Granted 
had long been on the stocks. Though never 
finished, she was occupied with it for some 
time, and began to see clearly where her diffi- 
culties lay. 

Your observations about the difficulties of Taken for 
Granted are excellent ; I " take for granted " I shall be 
able to conquer them. If only one instance were taken, 
the whole story must turn upon that, and be constructed 
to bear on one point; and that pointing to the moral 
would not appear natural. As Sir Walter said to me in 
reply to my observing, " It is difficult to introduce the 
moral without displeasing the reader": "The rats won't 
go into the trap if they smell the hand of the rat-catcher." 

The opening of the year 1826 was one of gen- 



238 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

eral financial depression. This was, of course, 
felt yet more acutely in Ireland, where money 
affairs are never too flourishing. Even the' 
estate of Edgeworthstown, that had as yet 
safely weathered all storms, was affected, and it 
was in consequence of this that, at her brother 
Loveirs desire. Miss Edgeworth once more 
resumed the rent-receiving and general man- 
agement, which since her father's death she 
had abandoned. With consummate skill and 
energy she managed so that her family escaped 
the flood that swamped so many. For Miss 
Edgeworth had keen business faculties, though, 
except in the matter of the estate, they had 
never been called into play. Her stepmother 
tells how — ' 

" The great difficulty was paying everybody 
when rents were not to be had ; but Maria, 
resolutely avoiding the expense and annoyance 
of employing a solicitor, undertook the whole, 
borrowing money in small sums, paying off en- 
cumbrances, and repaying the borrowed money 
as the times improved ; thus enabling her 
brother to keep the land which so many pro- 
prietors were then obliged to sell. While never 
distressing the tenants, she at last brought the 
whole business to a triumphant conclusion.'' 

Yet at no time was Miss Edgeworth absorbed 
in one thing only ; her wide and universal in- 



HOME LIFE. 239 

terests could not slumber. Thus, with all the 
work of a large estate on her hands, she still 
found time to read extensively. The letters 
published by Sir Walter Scott under the pseu- 
donym of Sir Malachy Malagrowther had just 
appeared. They interested her strangely. 

Lord Carrington was so kind as to frank to me these 
extraordinary performances, which shall reach you through 
Lord Rosse, if you please. It is wonderful that a poet 
could work up such an enthusiasm about one-pound notes; 
wonderful that a lawyer should venture to be so violent 
on the occasion as to talk of brandishing claymores, and 
passing the fiery cross from hand to hand ; and yet there 
is the Chancellor of the Exchequer answering it from 
his place in Parliament as a national concern! If Pat 
had written it, the Attorney-General would, perhaps, have 
noticed it ; but " Up with the shiilalah ! " in Pat's mouth, 
and " Out with the claymore ! " in Sir Malachy's, are 
different quite. 

A visit from Sir Humphrey Davy during the 
summer was a great delight. Miss Edgeworth 
speaks of the range and pitch of his mind with 
high praise, and relates besides an amusing 
anecdote that he told : — 

Sir Humphrey repeated to us a remarkable criticism of 
Bonaparte's on Talma's acting : " You don't play Nero 
well ; you gesticulate too much ; you speak with too 
much vehemence. A despot does not need all that ; he 
need only ^r^;^^^;^^^. Ilsait quHl se suffit. And," added 
Talma, who told this to Sir Humphrey, " Bonaparte, as 



240 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

he said this, folded his arms in his well-known manner, 
and stood as if his attitude expressed the sentiment." 

A little later another sister was taken from 
the family circle by marriage ; this time it was 
Miss Edgeworth's travelling companion and 
friend Harriet, who married Mr. Butler, a 
clergyman. The home party was thinning, 
and Miss Edgeworth, who liked to have a 
large number of her loved ones about her, felt 
this keenly. But happily young nephews and 
nieces were springing up to take the places of 
those who were gone, and fill the house with 
that sunshine of child-life and child-laughter 
that had seldom been absent from its walls. 

She wrote to her brother about a little 
nephew : — 

How you will like that child and make it see " upper 
air!" How long since those times when you used to 
show its mother and Harriet upper air ! Do you remem- 
ber how you used to do it to frighten me, and how I used 
to shut my eyes when you threw them up, and how you 
used to call me to look 1 Ah I le bon temps ! But we 
are all very happy now, and it is delightful to hear a 
child's voice cooing or even crying again in this house. 

She was devoted to children, and never hap- 
pier than when surrounded by them. They in 
their turn loved the kind little old lady — for 
she was getting an old lady now — who played 
with them so merrily, who entered into all their 



HOME LIFE. 241 

fun, who told them such pretty stories, who 
plied them with pennies and all manner of good 
and pretty things. She never lost the power 
of speaking their language ; her letters to chil- 
dren are among some of the most genial she 
wrote. She was pleased and gratified when 
the little ones liked her or her stories. 

Visits to Mrs. Ruxton at Black Castle, to 
married brothers and sisters, or to friends, 
formed more and more frequent interludes in 
her home-life ; but each time she returns, Miss 
Edgeworth records her excessive happiness to 
find herself at Edgeworthstown again, with her 
beloved stepmother and those who still were 
left. 

After one such visit to Mrs. Ruxton, she 
writes to her : — 

After spending four months with you, it is most delight- 
ful to me to receive from you such assurances that I have 
been a pleasure and a comfort to you. I often think of 
William's most just and characteristic expression, that 
you have given him a desire to live to advanced age, by 
showing him how much happiness can be felt and con- 
ferred in age, where the affections and intellectual facul- 
ties are preserved in all their vivacity. In you there is a 
peculiar habit of allowing constantly for the compensating 
good qualities of all connected with you, and never 
unjustly expecting impossible perfections. This, which 
I have so often admired in you, I have often determined 
to imitate ; and in this my sixtieth year, to commence in 
a few days, I will, I am resolved, make great progress. 



242 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

" Rosamond at sixty," says Margaret. We are all a very 
happy party here, and I wish you could see at this 
moment, sitting opposite to me on a sofa and in an arm- 
chair, the mother and daughter and grandchild. 

The outward course of existence at home was 
one of quiet routine. Habits of order had been 
early impressed upon Miss Edgeworth by Mrs. 
Honora Edgeworth, and though naturally impet- 
uous, she had curbed herself to act with method. 
It was thanks to these acquired habits that she 
was able to accomplish daily such a surprising 
amount of multifarious work. It was her cus- 
tom to get up at seven, take a cup of coffee, 
read her letters, and then walk out about three- 
quarters of an hour before breakfast. So punc- 
tual and regular was she that for many years a 
lady residing in the village used to be roused 
by her maid with the words, '^Miss Edgeworth's 
walking, ma'am ; it's eight o'clock.'' She gen- 
erally returned with her hands full of roses or 
other flowers that she had gathered, and taking 
her needlework or knitting, would sit down at 
the family breakfast, a meal that was a special 
favorite of hers, though she rarely partook of 
anything. But while the others were eating 
she delighted to read out to them such extracts 
from the letters she had received as she thought 
would please them. She listened, too, while 
the newspaper was read aloud, although its lit- 



HOME LIFE. 243 

erary and scientific contents always attracted 
her more than its political ; for in politics, 
except Irish, she took little interest. - 

This social meal ended, she would sit down to 
write, penning letters, attending to business, or 
inditing stories if any such were in progress. 
She almost always wrote in the common sitting- 
room, as she had done during her father's life- 
time, and for many years on a little desk he had 
made for her, and on which, shortly before his 
death, he had inscribed the words : — 

On this humble desk were written all the numerous 
works of my daughter, Maria Edgeworth, in the common 
sitting-room of my family. In these works, which were 
chiefly written to please me, she has never attacked the 
personal character of any human being, or interfered with 
the opinions of any sect or party, religious or political; 
while endeavoring to inform and instruct others, she 
improved and amused her own mind and gratified her 
heart, which I do believe is better than her head. 

R. L. E. 

After her father's death she used a writing- 
desk that had been his, and which accompanied 
her whenever she went away. At home it was 
placed on a table he had made, and to which 
she, inheriting some of his faculty for mechani- 
cal inventions, had attached some ingenious 
contrivances of her own, such as brackets, fire- 
screens and paper-rests. In summer time this 



244 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

little table was generally rolled into a recess 
behind the pillars of the library ; in winter it 
stood near the fire. She wrote on folio sheets, 
which she sewed together in chapters, and her 
manuscripts were wonderfully neat, clean and 
free from erasures. At luncheon-time she 
ceased writing, and since she made this her 
chief meal in the day, she was obliged, often 
most unwillingly, to forego her desire to return 
to her desk. But she knew that to write 
directly after eating was bad for her, and she 
submitted instead to doing some needlework. 
It was while working with her needle, however, 
that most of her stories were conceived and 
developed. 

Sometimes she would drive out in the after- 
noon. She was rather nervous about horses, 
and always sat with her back to them, that she 
might not see them. When quite at ease on 
the score of coachman and steeds, she greatly 
enjoyed a drive in an open carriage, talking and 
laughing all the time, and amusing her compan- 
ions with her endless flow of anecdotes and fun. 
With her habitual indifference to nature she 
rarely knew and still less cared whither the 
drive had been directed. Most commonly she 
wrote again till dinner-time. In her later years 
she would retire and sleep for an hour after 
this meal, rejoining the family circle at the tea- 



HOME LIFE, 245 

table. The evenings were usually spent in 
reading aloud ; sometimes Miss Edgeworth was 
the reader, sometimes she would work and listen 
while others read. The enjoyment she felt in 
literature was imparted to those about her ; she 
would manage to extract something, either 
knowledge or amusement, out of the dullest 
book. Her stepmother says that she would 
often linger after the usual bed-time, to talk 
over what she had heard, when bright, deep or 
solid observations would alternate with gay 
anecdotes apropos of the work or its author. 
For Miss Edgeworth's best talk was not 
reserved for abroad, but was rather poured forth 
at its best when surrounded by those she loved. 
That her conversation was at all times delight- 
ful there is abundant testimony. Mr. Ticknor 
says of it : '' There was a life and spirit about 
her conversation, she threw herself into it with 
such abandon^ she retorted with such brilliant 
repartee, and, in short, she talked with such 
extraordinary flow of natural talent, that I don't 
know whether anything of the kind could be 
finer." 

It is said that even those who came to pay a 
mere morning call would often remain for hours, 
loth to terminate the conversation. Nor was 
her talk by any means uniformly grave ; she 
knew most happily how to blend the grave and 



246 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

gay; she loved to laugh herself and arouse 
laughter in others, and when she laughed she did 
so with all the exuberant enjoyment of an Irish- 
woman. Indeed, there was far more of the light- 
hearted, merry Irishwoman in Miss Edgeworth 
than her writings, especially her moral tales, 
would lead the world to suppose. In her, Irish 
good qualities were mingled with practical wis- 
dom, judgment and good sense, and produced 
a combination both rare and charming. She 
said of herself that she was ugly, remarking 
that she was the last ugly person left ; the rest 
of the world were no longer anything but plain ; 
but those who knew her did not subscribe to 
this verdict. She was not, and never had been, 
good-looking ; * but a face that beamed such 
kindliness, reflected such intelligence, could 
never be really plain. In form she was petite ; 
her well-made, almost elegant figure, that 
remained slight to the last, was enhanced by a 
scrupulously trim appearance. She was very 
neat and particular in her dress, and was not 
only always tidy, but well attired and in accord- 
ance with the fashion. She maintained through- 
out her life that a woman should not be above 
attending to her dress. Ostentation of any 

* She always refused to have her portrait taken, and all 
published so-called portraits of Maria Edgeworth are purely 
fancy productions. 



HOME LIFE. 247 

kind was foreign to her nature. When a rela- 
tive died, leaving her a pair of valuable diamond 
ear-rings and pearl bracelets, her instant thought 
was, what good could she do with them ? They 
were sold at once, and with the proceeds she 
built a village market-house and a room for the 
magistrate's petty sessions. Her generosity, 
both in giving money, time and labor for others, 
was boundless ; and her kindnesses were made 
doubly kind by the thoughtfulness with which 
they were executed. Thus, for example, many 
of her tenants and neighbors had relations or 
friends who had emigrated to the United States. 
These poor people often found that letters they 
wrote to America miscarried, a frequent reason 
being of course insufficient or illegible addresses. 
To obviate this. Miss Edgeworth caused them 
to send her all their letters, which she then for- 
warded once a month. This labor often gave 
her no small trouble, but she grudged neither 
this nor the time spent in making up the 
monthly packet. Her poor neighbors, she 
deemed, repaid her only too richly by their grat- 
itude. She was certainly one of the few people 
who practice what they preach ; she exemplified 
in her own person all those judicious plans and 
rules for helping the needy which she had 
brought forward in her works. When it is 
further remembered that Miss Edgeworth 



248 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

retained to the very last, until her eighty-second 
year, that faculty, which is judged the exclusive 
gift of youth, of admitting new interests into 
her life, and that she further made them to run 
side by side with those she had held of yore, in 
this mode enriching and widening her mental 
and emotional horizon, it is little wonder that 
her old age was one of serene felicity. 

The marriage of Fanny Edgeworth, Miss 
Edgeworth's favorite among all her younger 
sisters, was a real grief to her for the moment, 
though, with her usual unselfishness, she 
upbraided herself for feeling such a '* shame- 
ful, weak, selfish sorrow at parting with this 
darling child/' A pleasure of a very different 
kind came to her shortly after in the shape of 
Sir Walter Scott's introduction to his collected 
Waverley Novels. The sheets, while passing 
through the press, had been sent to her, and 
she felt that Scott had, in the most delightful 
and kind manner, said everything that could 
gratify her "as an author, friend and human 
creature." 

You might well say that I should be " ill to please " — 
you might have said impossible to please — if what you 
sent me had not pleased, gratified, delighted me to the 
top of my bent; saturated me head and heart with the 
most grateful sense of the kindness of my most admired 
friend, and with the unspeakable gratification of such a 



HOME LIFE, 249 

testimony of his esteem and affection. I know full well, 
most sincerely I feel, that he over-values infinitely what I 
have written; but of this I am proud, because it proves 
to me that private friendship of his which I value above 
all, even his public praise. . . . 

Believe me, my dear sir, I feel it all ; and if I could, as 
you say, flatter myself that Sir Walter Scott was in any 
degree influenced to write and publish this novel from 
seeing my sketches of Irish character, I should indeed 
triumph in the thought of having been the proximate 
cause of such happiness to millions. 

Among the many advanced movements that 
Mr. Edgeworth had advocated was the cause of 
Catholic emancipation. In such public meas- 
ures as her father had felt an interest, Miss 
Edgeworth felt one too ; and it was a great joy 
to her that not only she, but her father's sister, 
had lived to see this measure carried. It is 
amusing to learn that it was a grievance of 
O'Connell's against Miss Edgeworth that she 
never directly espoused this cause by means of 
her pen. This was, in real fact, a compliment, 
as showing what a power her writings had 
become. 

In the summer, the *' reaper whose name is 
Death " reappeared amidst that united family, 
carrying off this time the able engineer, Wil- 
liam Edgeworth, who also succumbed to the 
fatal family malady. It was a shock and a grief 
to his devoted sister, who sorrowed the more 



250 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

when she saw her juniors go before her, and the 
grief told on her own health. She was ailing 
until autumn, often confined to the sofa and for- 
bidden her pen, though, happily for her, neither 
her needle nor her books. Her idle fancy began 
once more to weave romances, and she planned 
the story of Hele^t and made some notes for it. 
Contrary to her previous custom, she did not 
draw up a complete sketch, as she had done 
while writing under her father's guidance. She 
jotted down the rough outlines, and trusted to 
spontaneous promptings to fill in the details. 
But she was not even certain at all whether she 
should attempt to write it ; and although 
encouraged by the success of Harry and Lucy, 
she was nervous about grappling with higher 
work, deprived of the guide who had been her 
life-long stay. 

For years she had rejected all suggestions to 
turn her attention once more to novel-writing, 
and but for the encouragement of her sister 
Harriet (Mrs. Butler), Helen would probably 
never have seen the light. It was first seriously 
thought of in 1830, but proceeded slowly. Life 
brought more interruptions to her than it had 
done in youth — family events, visits of kind- 
ness and pleasure, absorbed much time. Then, 
too, she was greatly engrossed by her agency 
business, to which all else was made to defer. 



HOME LIFE, 251 

She was punctual, we are told, not only to the 
day, but to the hour, of her payments ; and her 
exertions to have the rents paid and the money 
ready for these payments were unvarying. 
She herself looked after the repairs, the letting 
of the village houses, the drains, gutters and 
pathways, the employment of the poor, — in 
short, all the hundred and one duties that de- 
volve upon the steward of landed property. It 
was considered by her family that all this ex- 
ertion was in no wise too much for her ; that, 
on the contrary, it was good for her health, 
inducing her to walk out and take more exercise 
than she would have done without an object in 
view. Even the very drudgery of accounts and 
letters of business, says her stepmother, *' though 
at times almost too much for her bodily strength, 
invigorated her mind ; and she went from the 
rent-book to her little desk and the manuscript 
of Helen with renewed vigor. She never wrote 
fiction with more life and spirit than when she 
had been for some time completely occupied 
with the hard realities of life.'' 

Nevertheless, Helen progressed slowly, and 
was several times in danger of being thrust 
aside. She wrote to her sister : — 

My dear Harriet, can you conceive yourself to be an 
old lamp at the point of extinction, and dreading the 
smell you would make at going out, and the execrations 



252 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

which in your dying flickerings you might hear ? And 
then you can conceive the sudden starting up again of 
the flame when fresh oil is poured into the lamp. And 
can you conceive what that poor lamp would feel return- 
ing to light and life ? So felt I when I had read your 
letter on reading what I sent to you of Helen. You 
have given me new life and spirit to go on with her. I 
would have gone on from principle, and the desire to do 
what my father advised — to finish whatever I began; 
but now 1 feel all the difference between working for a 
dead or a live horse. 

To the day of her death Miss Edgeworth 
never became the prudent, staid, self-contained 
person we should imagine her from her books, 
did we possess them only as guides to her 
character. Rosamond remained as generously 
impulsive as ever. On one occasion she writes 
to Mrs. Ruxton : — 

It is very happy for your little niece that you have so 
much the habit of expressing to her your kind feelings. 
I really think that if my thoughts and feelings were shut 
up completely within me, I should burst in a week, like 
a steam engine without a snifting-clack, now called by the 
grander name of a safety-valve. You want to know what 
I am doing and thinking of: of ditches, drains and 
sewers, of dragging quicks from one hedge and sticking 
them down into another, at the imminent peril of their 
green lives ; of two houses to let, one tenant promised 
from the Isle of Man, another from the Irish Survey ; of 
two bullfinches, each in his cage on the table — one who 
would sing if he could, and the other who could sing, I 
am told, if he would. Then I am thinking for three 
hours a day of Helen^ to what purpose I dare not say. 



HOME LIFE. 253 

Before the year 1830 was ended Miss Edge- 
worth had lost this aunt, whom she had loved 
so long and fondly. It was the severing of a 
life-long friendship, the heaviest blow that had 
befallen her since her father's death. She was 
in London when the event took place, and it 
was some comfort to her to find herself so kindly 
welcomed by those whom she had liked best in 
years gone by. She says sadly : — 

It is always gratifying to find old friends the same after 
long absence, but it has been particularly so to me now, 
when not only the leaves of the pleasures of life fall nat- 
urally in its winter, but when the great branches on whom 
happiness depended are gone. 

During this visit she kept out of all large 
parties, but renewed many old ties. One of 
the things she enjoyed most was a children's 
party at Mrs. Lockhart's. She was in her ele- 
ment among the young ones. " If Mrs. Lock- 
hart had invented forever she could not have 
found what would please me more.'' This 
London visit extended over some months : — 

Old as I am, and imaginative as I am thought to be, I 
have really always found that the pleasures I have 
expected would be great, have actually been greater in 
the enjoyment than in the anticipation. This is written 
in my sixty-fourth year. The pleasure of being with 
Fanny has been far, far greater than I had expected. 
The pleasures here altogether, including the kindness of 



254 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

old friends and the civilities of acquaintances, are still 
more enhanced than I had calculated upon by the home 
and the quiet library and easy-chair morning retreat I 
enjoy. 

On her return to Edgeworthstown she 
wrote : — 

My last visit to universal London confirms to my own 
feelings your eulogium. I never was so happy there in 
my life, because I had, besides all the external pleasures, 
the solid satisfaction of a home there, and domestic pleas- 
ures, without which I should soon grow aweary of the 
world, and wdsh the business of the town were done. It 
is most gratifying to me, at such a distance, to hear and 
to believe that siich kind and cultivated friends as you 
miss my company and wish for my future return. I 
should be very sorry if I were told this minute that I was 
never to see London again, and yet I am wondrous 
contented and happy at home. 

It is a curious circumstance, but a fact of 
frequent observation, that large families are 
often more united than small ones. The Edge- 
worths were a case in point. They had that 
devoted affection, that blind belief in one 
another, that often distinguishes a clan. They 
preferred each other's society to that of stran- 
gers ; they regarded themselves as beings 
apart ; what one did, the others approved ; 
harmony and good will reigned supreme. With 
so many different families living under one 
roof, it was a rare and curious fusion, this 



HELEN, 255 

home party, of which one of the brothers said 
that ^^ each star is worthy of separate observa- 
tion for its serenity, brilliancy or magnitude ; 
but it is as a constellation they claim most 
regard, linked together by strong attachment 
and moving in harmony through their useful 
course." 

It was as a star of the first magnitude in this 
constellation that Miss Edgeworth loved to 
move and have her being, and she chose to 
be set there rather than shine in brilliancy 
alone. Miss Edgeworth, the woman, must 
always be thought of in connection with her 
home and home attachments. To love, shrouded 
in the quiet obscurity of , domestic life, was the 
secret of existence to this simple-minded nature. 

That Helen was liked by the home circle was 
a real pleasure to its author. She was anxious 
for criticism and took all she received in good 
part. ^^I am a creature/' she once said, ^Hhat 
can take advice, can be the better for it, and 
am never offended by it.'' The family approval 
given, the manuscript was despatched to Lon- 
don with more confidence than she had ever 
expected to feel again in a literary work. 
Lockhart managed the business arrangements, 
for to this she did not feel equal, and when 
asked if the book should be in two or three 
volumes, replied : — 



256 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

I have satisfied my own conscience, which is my point, as 
I know that far from having stretched a single page, or a 
single sentence, to make out a third volume, I have cut 
as much as ever I could — cut it to the quick; and now 
it matters not whether it be printed in three or in two 
volumes. If tiresome to the ear in three, it would be 
equally so in two, and would look worse to the eye. 

The reason why her new story was not an 
Irish one she gives in a letter to a brother in 
India : — 

I should tell you beforehand that there is no humor in 
it and no Irish character. It is impossible to draw Ire- 
land as she now is in a book of fiction — realities are too 
strong, party passions too violent to bear to see, or care 
to look at their faces in the looking-glass. The people 
would only break the glass and curse the fool who held 
the mirror up to nature — distorted nature, in a fever. 
We are in too perilous a case to laugh : humor would be 
out of season, worse than bad taste. Whenever the dan- 
ger is passed, as the man in the sonnet says, " We may 
look back on the hardest part and laugh." Then I shall 
be ready to join in the laugh. Sir Walter Scott once said 
to me, " Do explain to the public why Pat, who gets for- 
ward so well in other countries, is so miserable in his 
own." A very difiicult question; I fear above my 
power. But I shall think of it continually, and listen, and 
look, and read. 

Things were once more in a bad way in that 
unhappy country, and Miss Edgeworth saw 
great distress all around her. A letter written 
at that time might almost be written to-day : — 



IRELAND. 257 

I fear we have much to go through in this country be- 
fore we come to quiet, settled life, and a ready obedience 
to the laws. There is hterally no rein of law at this mo- 
ment to hold the Irish ; and through the whole country 
there is what I cannot justly call a spirit of reform^ but 
a spirit of revolution^ under the name of reform ; a rest- 
less desire to overthrow what is^ and a hope — more than 
a hope — an expectation of gaining liberty or wealth, or 
both, in the struggle; and if they do gain either, they 
will lose both again and be worse off than ever — they 
will afterwards quarrel amongst themselves, destroy one 
another, and be again enslaved with heavier chains. I 
am and have been all my life a sincere friend to mod- 
erate measures, as long as reason can be heard ; but there 
comes a time, at the actual commencement of uproar, 
when reason cannot be heard, and when the ultimate law 
of force must be resorted to, to prevent greater evils. 
That time was lost in the beginning of the French Revo- 
lution — I hope it may not be lost in Ireland. It is 
scarcely possible that this country can now be tran- 
quihzed without military force to reestablish law; the 
people ifnust be made to obey the laws or they cannot be 
ruled after any concessions. Nor would the mob be able 
to rule if they got all they desire ; they would only tear 
each other to pieces, and die drunk or famish sober. 
The misfortune of this country has been that England 
has always yielded to clamor what should have been 
granted to justice. 

As Miss Edgeworth advanced in life she 
often spoke of ''my poor Ireland/' showing that 
hopelessness v^ith regard to the problem had 
dawned on her. She was a patriot, but belonged 
to no party; and was blind neither to the 
9 



258 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

nation's wrongs, follies nor crimes. She grew 
more and more to advocate the laissez-faire 
system. She contended that her observations, 
which extended over so long a period of time, 
had shown her steady progression in Ireland, 
and she believed that the land would ultimately 
do well if people would only not force their 
political nostrums upon it. What she did de- 
mand from England was equality of legislation, 
but no more; and this accorded, she believed 
Ireland would rise from her state of degrada- 
tion, though of necessity the rise would be 
slow, since the length of time of recovery must 
be in proportion to the length and force of the 
infliction. Mrs. Hall very rightly remarked 
that Miss Edgeworth's affection for Ireland was 
"philosophic.'' Yet another change Miss Edge- 
worth observed in the Irish, and one that made 
them less useful to her for literary purposes : — 

The modern peasantry imagine they have a part to 
play in the organization of their country ; their heads are 
fuller of politics than fun ; in fact, they have been drilled 
into thinking about what they cannot understand, and so 
have become reserved and suspicious — that is, to what 
they used to be. 

After Helen had passed through the press. 
Miss Edgeworth accompanied her friends Sir 
Culling and Lady Smith in a trip through Con- 
nemara. Of the adventures they had on this 



HELEN, 259 

journey — real Irish adventures, with innumer- 
able sloughs to traverse, with roads that im- 
perilled life, with inns whose dirt and discomfort 
passed belief, with roadside hospitality from 
kindly but eccentric gentlefolks — Miss Edge- 
worth wrote a letter some forty pages long to a 
brother in India. For fun and graphic vivacity 
it is not surpassed by the best of her printed 
Irish scenes. After her return *^rents and 
odious accounts'' kept her mind from running 
too much upon Helen^ about which she was more 
anxious than about any book she had ever sent 
into the world. It soon proved as great a suc- 
cess as her earlier works, and a second edition 
was demanded after a few weeks. Her own 
feelings about the matter are expressed in 
a letter she wrote to Mr. Bannatyne, who had 
congratulated her on its public reception : — 

My dear Mr. Bannatyne : 

I thank you with all my heart for the " nervousness " 
you felt about my venturing again before the public, and 
it is a ^^^r/-felt as well as a head-i^i satisfaction to me 
that you do not think I have lowered what my father 
took such pains to raise for me. You cannot conceive 
how much afraid I was myself to venture what had not 
his corrections and his sanction. For many, many years 
that feeling deterred me from any attempt in this line. 
Of what consequence, then, to my happiness it is to be 
assured, by friends on whose sincerity and judgment I 
can depend, that I have not done what I ought to repent 
or to be ashamed of. 



260 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Concerning Helen contemporary public opin- 
ion was much divided ; some regarded it as a 
falling-off in power, others as an advance, but 
all agreed that there was a change. The 
change is one of tone and feeling, induced in 
part, no doubt, by the fact that it was the ema- 
nation of her own brain only ; in part that years 
had caused Miss Edgeworth, as it causes all of 
us, to regard life from a different standpoint. 
Experience had taught her to 

Gentler scan her brother man 

than she did in earlier life. Helen is so much 
superior in ease, nature and poetry, that it 
makes us deplore that Miss Edgeworth's tal- 
ents had not been allowed unchecked sway. 
Not only is the fable more skillfully framed, 
but the whole shows greater passion and finer 
insight into the more subtle moods of humanity. 
Too often when men and women go on writing 
far into their latter years we are apt to wish 
that, like Prospero, they had buried their wand 
before it had lost its power. This is not the 
case with Miss Edgeworth. Helen^ her last 
novel, which appeared after so long a silence, 
is in some respects the most charming of her 
tales — a fact doubtless due in some measure to 
the time that had elapsed since the cessation of 
her father's active influence. The old brilliancy^ 



HELEN, 261 

the quick humor, the strong sense of justice and 
trutl^ which is the moral backbone of her work, 
are there as before ; but through the whole tale 
there breathes a new spirit of wider tenderness 
for weak, struggling human nature, and a gen- 
tleness towards its foibles, which her earlier 
writings lacked. Years had taught her a wider 
toleration, had shown her, too, how large a part 
quick, unreasoning instincts and impulses play- 
in the lives of men and women, even of those 
whose constant struggle it is to subdue act and 
thought to the rule of duty. Helen is more of 
a romance than any of its predecessors, perhaps 
because the chief interest of the tale is concen- 
trated in the heroine, who is the central figure 
round which the other persons of the story 
revolve, while in Miss Edgeworth's earlier 
novels the subsidiary characters are the most 
interesting and amusing. We wish Belinda 
well, but she does not move our feelings as 
does Lady Delacour, and Sir Philip Baddeley 
is infinitely more diverting than Clarence Har- 
vey is fascinating. And it is the same in all 
the others, while the centre of Helen is the girl 
herself. Yet the other characters are no less 
admirably drawn, with the old delicacy and 
firmness of touch, the occasional quaint gleams 
of humor. In its way Miss Edgeworth never 
limned a finer portrait than that of Lady Dave- 



262 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

nant, the large-brained, large-hearted woman o£ 
the world, endowed with strong principle, keen 
sense and real vigor of character, mingled with 
prejudice, impulsive likes and dislikes, an 
imperfect adherence in practice to her own 
theories of right and wrong, and a stern power 
of self -judgment. There is nothing exaggerated 
in this admirable and vigorous piece of work. 
We comprehend Cecilia's nervous fear of the 
mother whose unswerving truth cows her, while 
it attracts the answering truth of nature of her 
truer and stronger friend. Equally good is the 
character of Lady Cecilia, through whose duplic- 
ity and cowardice arise all Helen's troubles ; her 
husband. General Clarendon, who held 

All fraud and cunning in disdain, 
A friend to truth, in speech and action plain ; 

the malicious Lady Beatrice and her silly, pretty 
sister ; while Horace Churchill, the man about 
town, who is more modern in tone than Miss 
Edgeworth's earlier portraits of the same class, 
loses nothing by comparison with them. Despite 
his restless egotism, his spitefulness, his gener- 
ally unpleasant character, he is a gentleman in 
all outside seeming, the old-fashioned, perfect 
tone of high breeding marks him, and he is 
even capable of a certain generosity that seems 
more an inherited instinct than a part of his 



HELEN, 263 

individual nature. Esther, the general's sister, 
is one of the quaintest and most delightful 
characters in the book, drawn with kindliness 
and humor — a girl with the power of a noble 
woman hidden under the crust of a gruff and 
abrupt exterior, which springs half from shy- 
ness, half from a defiant love of truth and 
hatred of conventional chains. The purpose of 
Helen is to show how much the sufferings and 
dissensions of social life arise from the prevail- 
ing digressions from truth, often due in the first 
instance to small society politenesses. Its key- 
note lies in the ejaculation of Miss Clarendon: 
**I wish that word j^^ was out of the English 
language, and white lie drummed out after it. 
Things by their right names, and we should all 
do much better. Truth must be told, whether 
agreeable or not." Most perfectly and naturally 
is the imbroglio brought to pass, the entangle- 
ment caused by the love-letters, the way in 
which every fresh deceit on the part of Cecilia, 
meant to be harmless, tells in her husband's 
mind against the friend behind whom she is 
basely hiding her own fault. With Cecilia, 
whose failings were of the kind with which 
Miss Edgeworth had least mercy, she is singu- 
larly gentle. For once she lets us pity the 
offender while we condemn the crime. Life 
had probably taught her that consequences are 



264 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

SO surely unpitying that she no longer felt the 
need to insist on this, as she had done in for- 
mer years, when she would probably have 
sketched for us the whole course of Cecilia's 
punishment, whose nature she now only indi- 
cates. Helen is a charming heroine; no wax 
doll of impossible perfection, but a very woman, 
wayward and weak sometimes, but true, high- 
spirited, impulsively generous, staunch in her 
friendship and her love, with deep and pas- 
sionate feelings controlled, not crushed, by 
duty. 

Another marked change is shown in the man 
ner in which Helen and Granville Beauclerc 
fall in love. Miss Edgeworth had always pro- 
tested against the doctrine that love is a mere 
matter of personal beauty; she showed how it 
may enslave for a moment, but that a preference 
resting on so precarious a foundation was but a 
paltry tribute to her sex. Love, she rightly 
preached, must be founded on higher motives ; 
but her heroes and heroines were too apt to fall 
in love in an edifying and instructive manner ; 
they know too well why they succumbed to the 
tender passion. Until now she had almost 
denied the existence of romantic love, agreeing, 
it would seem, with her own Mrs. Broadhurst : 
"Ask half the men you are acquainted with 
why they are married, and their answer, if they 



HELEN. 265 

speak the truth, will be : ^ Because I met Miss 
Such-a-one at such a place, and we were contin- 
ually together/ '' " * Propinquity, propinquity,' 
as my father used to say — and he was married 
five times, and twice to heiresses/' That amia- 
ble and respectable Bluebeard, Miss Edgeworth's 
father, had hitherto held final sway over her 
characters. Was it the removal of this influ- 
ence that allowed Helen and Granville to fall in 
love in a more rational manner ? Helen does 
not now wait to see whether Beauclerc has every 
virtue under the sun before she ventures to love 
him ; indeed, she sees his foibles clearly, and it 
is just when she believes that he has shown a 
lack of honor and sincerity that in her burst of 
grief she discovers that she loves him ; loves 
him whatever he is, whatever he does. As for 
Granville, he falls in love in a thorough-going, 
earnest manner, which increases our feeling of 
his reality. It has been objected to Miss Edge- 
worth's love-making that it is stiff as compared 
with that of the present day. It certainly pre- 
sents a contrast to that of the Broughton school ; 
but the loves of Helen and Granville, as told by 
her in so real and human a manner, reveal their 
feelings to be none the less tender that they are 
not hysterical, or any the less deep for their 
power of modesty, reverence and reserve. 

Helen was suggested by Crabbe's tale, The 



266 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Confidant^ but that feeling which is sinfully grat- 
ified and severely punished in Crabbe's story 
becomes refined and reformed in Miss Edge- 
worth's crucible. It is, however, interesting to 
compare her romance with the rapid sketch of 
the stern original. Another new feature in 
Helen is a tendency to describe natural objects. 
Until now there had never been in Miss Edge- 
worth's writings a description of scenery or a 
sign of delight in it. She had, as we know, a 
contempt for the mere pleasures of the senses, 
and so little appreciation of the beautiful that 
she once condemns a character who buys some- 
thing to gratify the eye, not recognizing that 
the eye, as well as the body and mind, must be 
fed. Yet in Helen, to our surprise, we encoun- 
ter some lovingly detailed scenic bits ; we even 
find her citing Wordsworth. It is clear she had 
not remained wholly untouched by the new 
influences surging around her. Another feature 
of Helen is the lack of a didactic tone. Speak- 
ing of Scott's novels, she remarks that his 
morality is not in purple patches, ostentatiously 
obtrusive, but woven in through the very tex- 
ture of the stuff. She knew that her faults lay 
in the opposite direction, and it is evident she 
had striven to avoid them. A writer who can 
learn from criticism and experience, who can 
adopt a new method of writing when past the 



HELEN, 267 

age of sixty, is a remarkable writer indeed. 

The fears that Miss Edgeworth had felt con- 
cerning Helen were truly uncalled for, but the 
eagerness with which she listened to criticisms 
upon it showed how little confident she felt of 
it herself. To her friend Dr. Holland she wrote 
after its appearance : — 

Dear Sir : 

I am very glad that you have been pleased with Helen 
— far above my expectations ! And I thank you for that 
warmth of kindness with which you enter into all the de- 
tails of the characters and plan of the story. Nothing 
but regard for the author could have made you give so 
much importance to my tale. It has always been my 
fault to let the moral end I had in view appear too soon 
and too clearly, and I am not surprised that my old fault, 
notwithstanding some pains which I certainly thought I 
took to correct it, should still abide by me. As to Lady 
Davenant's loving Helen better than she did her daugh- 
ter — I can't help it, nor could she. It is her fault, not 
mine, and I can only say it was very natural that, after 
having begun by mistake and neglect in her early educa- 
tion, she should feel afterwards disinclined to one who 
was a constant object of self-reproach to her. Lady 
Davenant is not represented as a perfect character. All, 
then, that I have to answer for is, whether her faults are 
natural to the character I drew, and tend in their repre- 
sentation to the moral I would enforce or insiituate. 

Oh, thank you for telling me of my blunder in making 
the dean die of apoplexy with his eyes fixed on Helen. 
Absurd ! How shall I kill him in the next edition, if ever 
I am allowed an opportunity ? Would palsy do t May 



268 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

there not be a partial power of will surviving a stroke of 
palsy, which would permit the poor old man to die with his 
eyes directed to his niece ? Please to answer this ques- 
tion ; and if palsy will not do my business, please to 
suggest something that will, and with as little alteration 
of the text as may be. Not because I am unwilling to 
take the trouble of correcting, but that I don't think it 
worth while to make alterations, even emendations, of 
great length. Better make a new one, according to Pope's 
hackney coachman's principle. (The punctuation shall 
be mended.) 



CHAPTER XIV. 

LAST YEARS. 

More and more Miss Edgeworth^s life re- 
volved round home and friends. ^^In this 
world, in which I have lived nearly three-quar- 
ters of a century, I have found nothing one- 
quarter so well worth living for as old friends,^' 
she said. In her person old age was seen in 
its most attractive form. Her lively interests 
remained undimmed. At seventy she even set 
herself to learn a new language, Spanish, while 
her impulsiveness never became extinct, though 
she playfully hoped that, provided she lived so 
long, she might perhaps at eighty arrive at years 
of discretion. It was in 1835 that Mr. Ticknor, 
the American historian of Spanish literature, 
visited Edgeworthstown. He has recorded in 
his journal a pleasing and vivid picture of his 
visit. He describes Miss Edgeworth as small, 
short and spare, with frank and kind manners, 
always looking straight into the face of those 
she spoke to with a pair of mild, deep gray eyes. 
Her kindness and vivacity instantly put her 



2/0 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

visitors at ease. Mr. Ticknor was also im- 
pressed with the harmony that existed in a 
family composed of the most heterogeneous rela- 
tionships. What struck him about Miss Edge- 
worth herself was her uncommon quickness of 
perception, her fertility of allusion, and the 
great resources of fact which a remarkable 
memory supplied to her. He likens her con- 
versation to that of her own Lady Davenant. 
Mr. Ticknor observed that though she would 
talk freely about herself and her works, she 
never introduced the subject, and never seemed 
glad to continue it. Indeed, though he watched 
carefully for it, he could not detect either any 
of the mystification or the vanity of authorship. 
He was struck with her good nature and desire 
to defend everybody, even Lady Morgan, as far 
as she could, though never so far as to be 
unreasonable. 

^'In her intercourse with her family she was 
quite delightful, referring constantly to Mrs. 
Edgeworth, who seems to be the authority in 
all matters of fact, and most kindly repeating 
jokes to her infirm aunt, Mrs. Sneyd, who 
cannot hear them, and who seems to have for 
her the most unbounded affection and admira- 
tion.'' 

The dispersion of so many members of her 
family imposed much letter-writing on Miss 



I 



HOME LIFE. 271 

Edgeworth, for all turned to her graphic pen 
for news of the dear old home. And, as 
before when she was away, those she left 
behind had to share in her pleasures, or they 
would be but sorry pleasures to her. Death, 
as well as marriages, had thinned the family 
ranks. Tenacious and warm in her affections 
as she was, Miss Edgeworth never took a 
morbid view concerning those who were gone. 
Everything morbid was foreign to her nature. 

There is something mournful, yet pleasingly painful, 
in the sense of the ideal presence of the long-loved 
dead. Those images people and fill the mind with 
unselfish thoughts, and with the salutary feeling of 
responsibility and constant desire to be and to act in 
this world as the superior friend would have wished 
and approved. 

And there were so many still left to love, 
young and old. ''Who would not like to live 
to be old if they could be so happy in friends 
as I am.^'' The enthusiastic affection in her 
peculiar family relations, which she kept unim- 
paired, cannot be better shown than by quoting 
one of the countless letters she wrote concern- 
ing those dear to her : — 

Edgeworthstown, Nov. I, 1838. 

My dear Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor: 

I know so well your kind feelings towards all this 
family, that I am sure you will be pleased with the 



2J2 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

intelligence which I am going to communicate to you. 

My sister Honora is going to be happily married to 
a person every way suited to her (and that is saying a 
great deal), as you who most kindly and justly appre- 
ciated her will readily join with me in thinking. The 
gentleman's name, Captain Beaufort, R. N., perhaps you 
may be acquainted with, as he is in a public situation, 
and not unknown to literary and scientific fame. He is 
a naval officer. (I hope you like this officer's name i*) 
He made some years ago a survey of the coast of Cara- 
mania, and wrote a small volume on that survey, which 
has obtained for him a good reputation. He has been 
for some years Hydrographer Royal. ... In one 
word, he is a person publicly esteemed; and pri- 
vately he is beloved and esteemed by all who know 
him best. He is and has been well known to us ever 
since the present Mrs. Edgeworth's marriage with my 
father. Captain Beaufort is Mrs. Edgeworth's youngest 
brother. As Mrs. E. is Honora's j-^^/mother, you see 
that he is no relation whatever to Honora. But the 
nearness of the connection has given us all the best 
means of knowing him thoroughly. He was my dear 
father's most beloved pupil and friend ; by pupil I only 
mean that his being so much younger made him 
look up to my father with reverence, and learn from 
him in science and literature with delight. Thus has he 
been long connected with all I love. He has been a 
widower two years. He has three sons and four 
daughters. . . . The youngest daughter, Emily, 
is a delightful child. Captain Beaufort lives in London, 
1 1 Gloucester place ; has a very comfortable house, and 
sufficient fortune for all their moderate wishes. Honora's 
fortune, which is ample, will give them affluence. 

My dear Mrs. Ticknor, I know you particularly liked 



LETTER TO MRS. TICKNOR, 2/3 

Honora, and that you will be interested in hearing all 
these particulars, though it seems impertinent to detail 
them across the Atlantic to one who will, I fear, never 
see any one of the persons I have mentioned. Yet 
affections such as yours keep warm very long and at 
a great distance. 

I feel that I have got into a snug little corner in both 
your hearts, and that you will excuse a great deal from 
me; therefore I go on without scruple drawing upon your 
sympathy, and you will not protest my draft. 

You saw how devoted Honora was to her aunt, Mrs. 
Mary Sneyd, whom you liked so much ; and you will 
easily imagine what a struggle there has been in Honora's 
mmd before she could consent to a marriage with even 
such a man as Captam Beaufort, when it must separate 
her from her aunt. Captain Beaufort himself felt this so 
much that he never would have pressed it. He once 
thought that she might be prevailed upon to accompany 
them to London and to live with them. But Mrs. Mary 
Sneyd could not bear to leave Mrs. Edgeworth, and this 
place which she has made her heart's home. She decided 
Captain Beaufort and her niece to make her happy by 
completing their union, and letting her feel that she did 
not prevent the felicity of the two persons she loves best 
now in the world. She remains with us, 

The marriage is to take place next Tuesday or Thurs- 
day, and my Aunt Mary will go to the church with her 
niece and giye her away. I must tell you a little charac- 
teristic trait of this aunt, the least selfish of all human 
beings. She has been practicing getting up early in the 
morning, which she has not done for two years — has 
never got up for breakfast. But she has trained herself 
to rising at the hour at which she must rise on the wed- 
ding-day, and has walked up and down her own room the 
distance she must walk up and down the aisle of the 



274 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

church, to insure her being accustomed to the exertion 
and able to accomplish it easily. This she did for a long 
time without our knowing it, till Honora found it out. 
Mrs. Mary Sneyd is quite well and in excellent spirits. 

A younger sister of mine, Lucy, of whom you have 
heard us speak as an invalid, who was at Clifton with that 
dear Sophy whom we have lost, is now recovered, and 
has returned home to take Honora's place with her Aunt 
Mary ; and Aunt Mary likes to have her, and Lucy feels 
this a great motive to her to overcome a number of nerv- 
ous feelings, which formed part of her illness. A regular 
course of occupations and duties, and feeling herself 
essential to the happiness and the holding together of a 
family she so loves, will be the best strengthening medi- 
cine for her. She arrived at home last night. My sister 
Fanny and her husband, Lestock Wilson, are with us. 
My sister has much improved in health ; she is now able 
to walk without pain, and bore her long journey and voy- 
age here wonderfully. I have always regretted, and 
always shall regret, that this sister Fanny of mine had not 
the pleasure of becoming acquainted with you. You 
really must revisit England. My sister Harriet Butler, 
and Mr. Butler, and the three little dear Foxes, are all 
around me at this instant. Barry Fox, their father, will 
be with us in a few days, and Captain Beaufort returns 
from London on Monday. You see what a large and 
happy family we are ! ! ! 

Do I not give you some proof, my dear Mr. and Mrs. 
Ticknor, of my affection in writing to you at this moment? 
and if I write without much sense or connection you will 
not be surprised. 

My head is really upside down, and my feelings so 
divided between joy and sorrow — joy for Honora's hap- 
piness, but sorrow for the parting that must be ! 

It will all settle down under the hand of strong necessity 



LETTER TO MRS. TICKNOR. 275 

and of lenient time. My sisters Fanny and Harriet will 
stay with us some weeks after the marriage ; this will be 
a great comfort. 

Mr. Butler will perform the happy, awful ceremony. 
How people who do not love can ever dare to marry, to 
approach the altar to pronounce that solemn vow, I can- 
not conceive. 

My thoughts are so engrossed by this subject that I 
absolutely cannot tell you of anything else. You must 
tell me of everything that interests you, else I shall not 
forgive myself for my egotism. 

I am most sincerely and affectionately, my dear Mrs. 
Ticknor, with affectionate remembrances to your engag- 
ing daughter, not forgetting your little darling. 
Yours most sincerely, 

Maria Edgeworth. 

Mention Lockhart's Memoirs of Scatty of which my 
head and heart were full before this present all-engross- 
ing subject overcame me. 

I shall be quite rational again, I am sure, by the time 
your answer reaches me, so pray do not treat me as quite 
a hopeless person to write rationally to. 

Mrs. Edgeworth desires me to send you her very affec- 
tionate remembrances. 

I believe, I am almost sure, that I wrote to you, my 
dear Mr. Ticknor, some months ago while you were on 
the Continent, to thank you for the present you sent me, 
through Mr. Norton's means, of an American edition of 
my works. I thought it beautifully printed and bound, 
and the engravings excellent, particularly that for Helen^ 
and the vignette for Helen^ which we have not in the 
English edition. I have another American copy of this 
edition, and I have left yours for hfe with my brother 
Francis and my Spanish sister Rosa, who live in a little 



2^6 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

cottage near Windsor, and have not money to indulge 
themselves in the luxury of books. I hope you will not 
be angry with me for so doing; no, I think you will be 
glad that I made your present give me the greatest possi- 
ble sum of pleasure. Take into account the pride I felt 
in saying, Mr. Ticknor sent 7ne these books. 

I am ashamed to see that I have come so far in a 
second sheet, and in spite of all the wonderings at 
what can Maria be about f 

Sense in 7ny next. 

In answer to a letter from Mr. Ticknor, 
describing to her his library, in which the only 
picture was one of Sir Walter Scott, Miss Edge- 
worth wrote a reply, of which a portion has 
been published, but which contains besides an 
able parallel, or rather contrast, between Wash- 
ington and Napoleon, worthy of preservation 
for its own sake, and as a testimony to her 
unimpaired powers : — 

Trim, Nov. 19th, 1840. 
" Who talks of * Boston ' in a voice so sweet 1 " Who 
wishes to see me there ? and to show me their home, 
their family, their country? I have been there — at 
Boston ! " Yes, and in Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor's happy, 
beautiful home." I have been up "the slope of the 
Boston hillside," have seen "the fifty acres of public 
park" in all its verdure, with "its rich and venerable 
trees," its graveled promenade surrounding it, with those 
noble rows of venerable elms on either side. I have 
gone up the hillside and the steps profusely decked with 
luxuriant creepers; I have walked into Mr. and Mrs. 



^J 



LETTER TO MRS, TICKNOR. 2/7 

Ticknor's house, as I was desired — have seen the three 
rooms opening into one another, have sat in the library, 
too, and thought — and thought it all charming Look- 
ing into the country, as you know the windows all do, I 
saw down through " the vista of trees " to the quiet bay 
and the " beautiful " hills beyond, and I " watched the 
glories of the setting sun" lighting up country and town, 
"trees, turf and water ! " — an Itahan sun not more gor- 
geously attended than this "New England luminary" 
setting or rising. I met Sir Walter Scott in Mr. Tick- 
nor's library with all his benign, calm expression of 
countenance, his eye of genius and his mouth of humor 

— such as he was before the life of life was gone, such 
as genius loved to see him, such as American genius has 
given him to American friendship, immortalized in person 
as in mind. His very self I see feeling, thinking and 
about to speak — and to a friend to whom he loved to 
speak; and well placed and to his liking he seems in this 
congenial library, presiding and sympathizing. But my 
dear madam, ten thousand books, " about ten thousand 
books," do you say this library contains 1 My dear Mrs. 
Ticknor ! Then I am afraid you must have double rows 

— and that is a plague. But you may ask why do I con- 
ceive you have double rows ? Because I cannot conceive 
how else the book-cases could hold the ten thousand. 
Your library is 34 by 22, you say. But to be sure you 
have not given me the height, and that height may make 
out room enough. Pray have it measured for me, that I 
may drive this odious notion of double rows out of my 
head — "and what a head," you may say, "that must be 
that could calculate in such a place and at such a time ! " 
It was not my poor head, I assure you, my dear Mrs. 
Ticknor, but Captain Beaufort's ultra-accurate head. I 
gave him through Honora the description of your library, 
and he (jealous, I am clear, for the magnitude and num- 



2/8 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

ber of his own library and volumes) set to work at 22 by 
34 — and there I leave him — till I have the height to 
confound him completely. You see, my dear friends, 
that you need not again ask me to go to see you — for I 
have seen and I know everything about your home ; full 
as well I know Boston and your home as you know ours 
at Edgeworthstown. It is your turn now to come and 
see us again. But I am afraid to invite you, lest you 
should be disenchanted, and we should lose the delight- 
ful gratification we enjoy in your glamor of friendship. 
Aunt Mary, however, is really all you think and saw her, 
and in her ninety-first year still a proof as you describe 
her — and a remarkable proof — of the power of mind 
over time, suffering and infirmities ; and an example of 
Christian virtues making old age lovely and interesting. 

Your prayer, that she might have health and strength 
to enjoy the gathering of friends round her, has been 
granted. Honora and her husband, and Fanny and her 
husband, have all been with us this summer for months ; 
and we have enjoyed ourselves as much as your kind 
heart could wish. Especially " that beautifid specimen of 
a highly-cultivated gentlewoman^^"^ as you so well called 
Mrs. E., has been blest with the sight of all her children 
round her, all her living daughters and their husbands, 
and her grandchildren. Francis will settle at home and 
be a good country gentleman and his own agent — to 
Mrs. E.'s and all our inexpressible comfort and support, 
also for the good of the country, as a resident landlord 
and magistrate much needed. As he is at home I can be 
spared from the rent-receiving business, etc., and leaving 
him with his mother. Aunt Mary and Lucy, I can indulge 
myself by accepting an often-urged invitation from my 
two sisters Fanny and Honora, to spend some months 
with them in London. I have chosen to go at this quiet 
time of year, as I particularly wish not to encounter the 



LETTER TO MRS, TICK NOR. 279 

bustle and dissipation and lionizing of London. For 
tho' I am such a minnikin lion now, and so old, literally 
without teeth or claws, still there be, that might rattle at 
the grate to make me get up and come out and stand up 
to play tricks for them — and this I am not able or 
inclined to do. I am afraid I should growl — I never 
could be as good-humored as Sir Walter Scott used to 
be, when rattled for and made to " come out and stand 
on his hind legs," as he used to describe it, and then go 
quietly to sleep again. 

I shall use my privilege of seventy-two — rising 
seventy-three — and shall keep in my comfortable den: 
I will not go out. " Nobody asked you, ma'am," to play 
Lion, may perhaps be said or sung to me, and I shall 
not be sorry nor mortified by not being asked to exhibit, 
but heartily happy to be with my sisters and their family 
and family friends — all for which I go. Knowing mv 
own mind very well, I speak the mere plain truth. I 
shall return home to Edgeworthstown before the London 
season^ as it is called, commences, i. ^., by the end of 
March or at the very beginning of April. 

This is all I have for the present to tell you of my 
dear self, or of our family doings or plannings. You 
see I depend enough on the sincerity of your curiosity 
and sympathy, and I thank you in kind for all you have 
been so affectionately good to tell me of yourselves. 

I have been lately reading Thibeaudeau's ten volumes 
of the History of Napoleon — Le Consulat et V Em- 
pire — immediately after having read the life of Wash- 
ington by Sparks, a book which I think I mentioned to 
you had been sent to me by an American Jewess of 
Philadelphia, Miss Gratz. A most valuable present — 
a most interesting work it is. The comparison between 
the characters, power, deeds, fortune and fate of Wash- 
ington and Napoleon continually pressed on my mind 



28o MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

as I read their lives ; and continually I wished that 
some modern Plutarch with more of religious, if not 
more of moral and political knowledge and philosophy 
than the ancient times afforded, would draw a parallel — ■ 
no, not ?i parallel^ for that could not be — but a compari- 
son between Napoleon and Washington. It would give 
in the result a comparison between moral and intellectual 
power on the highest scale, and with the fullest display 
in which they have ever been seen in two national 
heroes. The superior, the universal abilities of Bona- 
parte, his power of perseverance^ of transition of 
resource, of comprehensiveness, of adaptation of means 
to ends, and all tending to his own aggrandizement, and 
his appetite for dominion growing with what it fed upon, 
have altogether been most astonishingly displayed in 
the Frenchman's history of Napoleon. The integrity, 
disinterestednesSj discretion, persevering adherence to 
one great purpose, marking the character and the career 
of Washington, are all faithfully portrayed by his 
American biographer, and confirmed by state papers 
and by the' testimony of an independent world. The 
comparison between what Napoleon and Washington 
did living, and left dying, of the fruits and consequences 
of their deeds, would surely be a most striking and 
useful moral and political lesson on true and false glory, 
and further, would afford the strongest illustrations of 
the difference in human affairs of what is called the 
power of fortune and the influence oi prestige^ and the 
power of moral character and virtue. See Napoleon 
deserted at his utmost need by those his prosperous 
bounty gorged. See Napoleon forced to abdicate his 
twice-snatched imperial sceptre ! — and compare this 
with your Washington laying down his dictatorship, 
his absolute dominion, voluntarily^ the moment he had 
accomplished his great purpose of, making his beloved 



LETTER TO MRS, TICKNOR. 28 1 

country, the New World, free and independent./ Then 
the deep, silent attachment shown to him when he 
retired from the army, parted from mihtary power, took 
leave of public life, is most touching — quite sublime 
in its truth and simplicity, in as strong contrast as 
possible with all the French acclamations, inconstancy, 
frivolity, desertion, treachery, insult, toward their pros- 
trate idol of an Emperor. I felt while I read, and I 
feel while I reflect, how much of the difference between 
Napoleon and Washington must be ascribed to the 
different times, nations, circumstances in which they 
were placed. But independent of all these, the com- 
parison ably and clearly drawn would lie between the 
individual characters — between moral and religious 
power and influence, and intellectual powers even 
supported by military glory and political despotism. 
The comparison would ultimately lie between success 
and merit, and between their transient and durable 
effects — their worldly and never-dying consequences. 

Forgive me, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, for my having 
been actually run away with thus, and forgetting what 
I was going to say when I began. I was going to say 
that I wish Mr. Ticknor would draw the comparison 
between these two heroes of false and true glory — 
between real patriotism, true and great to the last, and 
ambition, using patriotism as a mask, and having it 
struck from his hand powerless at the last. There is 
no one more able, better fitted to draw this than your 
husband. Channing has said well of the character of 
Napoleon as far as he went. But Mr. Ticknor, I 
conceive, has wider views, more means of information, 
and a less rhetorical style than Channing: and Sparks, 
having been the biographer of Washington, might be 
considered as a party too much concerned to be quite 
impartial. I am ashamed to have written so much that 



282 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

must seem common-place to him. But I will not tear 
the pages, as I am tempted to do, because there is a 
possibility that when you read them to him it might 
turn his mind to the subject — and no matter for the rest. 
****** 

I do not know whether I was most interested, dear 
Mrs. Ticknor, in your picture of your domestic hfe and 
happy house and home, or by the view you gave me 
of your pubhc festivity and celebration of your American 
day of days — your national festival in honor of your 
Declaration of Independence. 

It was never, I suppose, more joyously, innocently and 
advantageously held than on the day you describe so 
delightfully with the accuracy of an eye-witness. I think 
I too have seen all this, and thank you for showing it to 
me. It is a picture that will never leave the memory of 
my heart. I only wish that we could ever hope to have 
in Ireland any occasion or possibility of such happy and 
peaceable meetings, with united sympathy and for the 
keeping alive a feeling of national patriotism. No such 
point of union can be found, alas! in Ireland — no subject 
upon which sects and parties could coalesce for one hour, 
or join in rejoicing or feeling for their country. Father 
Mathew, one might have hoped, considering the good he 
has effected for all Ireland, and considering his own un- 
impeachable character and his real liberality, admitting 
all sects and all parties to take his pledge and share his 
benevolent efforts, 7night have formed a central point 
round which all might gather. But no such hope! for as 
I am J2ist now assured^ his very Christian charity and 
liberality are complained of by his Catholic brethren, 
priests and laity, who now begin to abuse him for giving 
the pledge to Protestants and say, "What good our fast- 
ings, our temperance, our being of the true faith, if Father 
Mathew treats heretics all as one. as Catholics them- 



LETTER TO MRS. TICKNOR, 283 

selves ! and would have 'em saved in this world and the 
next too?" Then I would not doubt but at the last he'd 
turn tail! aye, turn Protestant himself entirely. I have 
written so much to Mr. Ticknor about Father Mathew 
that I must here stop, or take care lest I run on with him 
again. Once set a-running, you see how I go on. You 
having encouraged me, and I from having conversed 
with you even for a few days, we have so much knowl- 
edge of each other's minds that it is as easy and pleasant 
to me to write as to speak to you. I will send you some 
Irish tales newly published by Mrs. Hall, which I think 
you will like, both from their being well-written and in- 
teresting portraitures of Irish life and manners, and from 
the conciliating, amiable and \xvXy feminine (not meaning 
feeble) tone in which they are written. 

^ ^ ^ ^ ik. ^£. 

vfr 1^ Tpr ^ ^ Tfr 

I have not yet thanked you enough, I feel, for Rollo, 
Our children all, and we ourselves, delight in him at play 
and at work, and every way, and we wish to see more of 
him. If there be any more of him, pray pack him up bag 
and baggage and send him off by first steamer, steam- 
haste. By the by, are you or your children acquainted 
with the elephant who in his haste forgot to pack up his 
trunk ? 

If you are not acquainted with him, I shall have the 
pleasure of introducing him to you and yours. 

Meantime, if you wish to be amused, and with what is 
new and what is true, read Mrs. Wilmot's Memoirs of 
the Princess Dashkoff^ and her own residence in Russia. 
We know enough of the author to warrant the whole to 
be true. I do not say that she tells the whole truth, but 
that all she does tell is true, and what she does not tell 
she was bound in honor and friendship, and by the tacit, 
inviolable compact between confidence shown and ac- 
cepted, never to reveal, much less to publish. Both in 



'^^ 



284 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

the Princess Dashkoff's own memoirs (very able and cu- 
rious) and in Mrs. Wilmot's continuation (very amusing 
and new) there are from time to time great gaps, on coming 
to which the reader cries Hal Ha J and feels that he 
must skip over. These gaps are never covered over; and 
when we come even to dangerous ground we see that we 
must not turn that way, or hope to get on in utter dark- 
ness and our guide deserting — or, if not deserting^ stand- 
ing stock still, obstinately dumb. These memoirs are 
not a book on which history could absolutely be founded, 
but a book to which the judicious historian might safely 
refer illustrations >^ and even for materials, all which it 
affords being sound and solid. Much more, in short, 
may these memoirs be depended upon than any or many 
of the French varnished and vamped-up Memoires pour 
servira V Histoire. 

After reading the book I wrote to Mrs. Wilmot, and 
after homage due to her talents and her truth, I ventured 
to express, what I am sure you will feel if you read the 
volume, some horror, towards the close, at the Princess 
Dashkoff's accepting for herself or her sister, or for who- 
ever it was, a ball from Orloff, the murderer — that Orloff 
who with his own hand strangled his Emperor. 

Mrs. Wilmot made me but a lame apology for her dear 
princess, I think, and an odd answer for herself. In the 
first place, she said, it was so long ago. As if such a 
murder could be a by-gone tale ! or as if thirty or- forty 
or any number of years could purify or cleanse a mur- 
derer in the eyes and sense of humanity or justice ! In 
the next place she j)leaded that she was so much pleased 
by OrlofE's angel daughter who stood beside him, and 
then with his parental delight in her beauty, simplicity 
and elegance in the dance. 

Mrs. Wilmot was sure I should have felt as she did, and 
have forgotten the murderer in the fathen But, on the con- 



LETTER TO MRS. TICKNOR, 285 

trary, I am afraid I should have forgotten the father in the 
murderer; I fear I should have seen only '^the vile spof 
which would never out of that hand ! And oh ! that hor- 
rible knee — I see it pressing on the body of the breath- 
less Peter; and, through all the music of the ball-room 
band, methinks I hear " shrieks of an agonizing king." 

Possibly in Russia "murder is lawful made by the 
excess," and may be palliated by the impartial historian's 
observing, "// was then necessary that the Emperor 
should Q^A.^^ TO be" — soft synonym for assassination. 

I ought not to leave Mrs. Wilmot and the Princess 
Dashkoff, however this may be, with a tragical and 
unmerited impression on your mind. I am quite con- 
vinced the princess had nothing to do with this horrid 
affair, or that our countrywoman never would have gone 
or never would have staid with her. 

I can also assure you that when you read these memoirs 
you will be convinced, as I am, that th^ Princess Dash- 
koff was quite pure from all the Empress Catherine's 
libertine intrigues (I can use no softer phrase). This is 
proved by facts, not words, for no word does she say on 
the subject. But the fact is that during Orloff, the favor- 
ite Orloff's reign and his numerous successors, the Prin- 
cess Dashkoff was never at court, banished herself on her 
travels or at her far-distant territories; she over-rated, 
idolized Catharine, but was her real friend, not flatterer. 

It is scarcely worth telling you, but I will for your 
diversion mention that I asked Mrs. Wilmot whether the 
Princess Dashkoff evermore went about in the costume, 
which she described, of a man's great-coat, with stars and 
strings over it, at the ball^ and with the sentimental old 
souvenir silk handkerchief about her throat. Yes. But 
Mrs. Wilmot would not let me laugh at her friend, and I 
liked her all the better. She defended the oddity by the 
kindness of the motive. It was not affectation of singu- 



s 



■T TT- 



286 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

larity, but privilege of originality, that should be allowed 
to a being so feeling and so educated by circumstances and 
so isolated — so let the ragged handkerchief and the old 
gloves museumized pass, and even the old overall of the 
man's coat on a woman and a princess — so be it. 

But from the time of Cardinal Chigi and his one stump 
of a twenty-years-old pen on which he piqued himself, I 
quite agree with Cardinal Mazarin * that these petty sin- 
gularities are proofs of a little mind, instead of an origin- 
ality of genius. 

And now, my dear Mrs. Ticknor, " Bisogna levar Tin- 
commodita " — to use the parting phrase of a vulgar Ital- 
ian who feels that she has made an unconscionable visit : 
or, as the cockney would say as she got up to depart from 
a morning visitation^ " Time for me to be going, I think." 
And if you do not think so, or have not thought so ten 
pages ago, you are more indulgent and fonder of me than 
I had any right or reason to expect, even after all I have 
heard /r^^ and seen ^you. 

I promise you that you shall not be so tried again for 
a twelvemonth to come, at the least. Give my kind remem- 
brances to your eldest daughter, who so kindly remembers 
me, and give a kiss for me to your youngest, that dear 
little plaything who cannot remember me, but whom I 
shall never forget ; nor her father's fond look at her, when 
the tear was forgotten as soon as shed. 

Ever affectionately, dear Mrs. Ticknor, 
Your obliged friend, 

Maria Edgeworth. 

Turn over, and as the children's fairy-boards say, "you 
shall see what you shall see." 

N. B. — Among the various scratchifications and scari- 

* This anecdote, attributed by Miss Edgeworth to Mazarin, 
is told by De Retz, and is to be found in his memoirs. 



LETTER TO MRS, TICKNOR, 287 

iications in this volume, you may remark that there have 
been reiterated scratches at Mrs. and Miss Wilmot, and 
attempts alternately to turn the lady into Mrs, and Miss. 

Be it now declared and understood that the lady is not 
either Mrs. or Miss Wilmot, but Mrs. Bradford — born 
Wilmot, daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Wilmot of Cork ■ — 
went over to Russia to better herself 2X the invitation of the 
Princess Dashkoff, who had, in a visit to Ireland, become 
acquainted with some of her family. What motives 
induced her to go to Russia, except the general notion of 
bettering her fortune, I cannot tell. But she did better 
her fortune, for the princess gave her pearls in strings, 
and diamonds in necklaces and rings, and five thousand 
solid pounds in her pocket, for all which she had like to 
have been poisoned before she could cleai away with 
them out of Russia. 

When she came back she married, or was married to, 
Mr. Bradford, a clergyman, and now lives in Sussex, 
England. 

Now, in consideration of my having further bored you 
with all this, be pleased whenever you see Mrs. or Miss 
Wihnot in the foregoing pages to read Mrs. Bradford, and 
you will save me thereby the trouble and danger of scratch- 
ing Mrs. or Miss Wilmot into ten or eleven holes. 

The visit to London referred to was paid. 
Part of the time was spent agreeably visiting 
friends, seeing sights and reading new books, 
among them Darwin's Voyage in the Beagle, 
which delighted Miss Edgeworth. But the 
larger portion of her stay was occupied in nurs- 
ing her sister Fanny through a weary illness, 
with the added mental anxiety of knowing that 



288 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Mrs. Edgeworth was ill at home. Both invalids, 
however, happily recovered, yet Miss Edgeworth 
was to find an empty chair on her return ; her 
aunt, Mary Sneyd, had been taken away at the 
advanced age of ninety. As often before, she 
felt the sorrow keenly, but rallied bravely from 
its effects for the sake of those who were left 
and who depended on her yet more. 

During the summer of 1842 Mr. and Mrs. 
S. C. Hall visited Ireland. They spent some 
days at Edgeworthstown, with the avowed pur- 
pose of writing of its occupants, and we have 
from their pen also a pleasant picture of the 
family home-life : — 

**The library at Edgeworthstown'' (say the 
writers) ^' is by no means the reserved and soli- 
tary room that libraries are in general. It is 
large and spacious and lofty ; well stored with 
books, and embellished with those most valuable 
of all classes of prints — the suggestive ; it is 
also picturesque, having been added to so as to 
increase its breadth ; the addition is supported 
by square pillars, and the beautiful lawn seen 
through the windows, embellished and varied 
by clumps of trees judiciously planted, imparts 
much cheerfulness to the exterior. An oblong 
table in the centre is a sort of rallying-point for 
the family, who group around it, reading, writing 
or working ; while Miss Edgeworth, only anxious 



HOME LIFE. 289 

upon one point — that all in the house should 
do exactly as they like, without reference to 
her — sits quietly and abstractedly in her own 
peculiar corner on the sofa, her desk — upon 
which lies Sir Walter Scott's pen, given to her 
by him when in Ireland — placed before her 
upon a little quaint table, as unassuming as pos- 
sible. Miss Edgeworth's abstractedness would 
puzzle the philosophers : in that same corner, 
and upon that table, she has written nearly all 
that has enlightened and delighted the world. 
There she writes as eloquently as ever, wrapt 
up to all appearance in her subj ect, yet knowing, 
by a sort of instinct, when she is really wanted 
in dialogue ; and, without laying down her pen, 
hardly looking up from her page, she will, by a 
judicious sentence wisely and. kindly spoken, 
explain and elucidate in a few words, so as to 
clear up any difficulty ; or turn the conversation 
into a new and more pleasing current. She has 
the most harmonious way of throwing in expla- 
nations — informing without embarrassing. A 
very large family party assemble daily in this 
charming room, young and old bound alike to 
the spot by the strong cords of memory and 
love. Mr. Francis Edgeworth, the youngest 
son of the present Mrs. Edgeworth, and of 
course Miss Edgeworth's youngest brother, has 
a family of little ones who seem to enjoy the 
10 



290 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

freedom of the library as much as their elders. 
To set these little people right if they are 
wrong ; to rise from her table to fetch them a 
toy, or even to save a servant a journey; to 
mount the steps and find a volume that escapes 
all eyes but her own, and, having done so, to 
find exactly the passage wanted — are hourly 
employments of this most unspoiled and admir- 
able woman. She will then resume her pen, 
and, what is more extraordinary, hardly seem to 
have even frayed the thread of her ideas ; her 
mind is so rightly balanced, everything is so 
honestly weighed, that she suffers no incon- 
venience from what would disturb and distract 
an ordinary writer." 

Miss Edgeworth wrote of this notice : — 

Mrs. Hall has sent to me her last number, in which 
she gives Edgeworthstown. All the world here are 
pleased with it, and so am I. I like the way in which 
she has mentioned my father particularly. There is an 
evident kindness of heart and care to avoid everything 
that could hurt any of our feelings, and at the same 
time a warmth of affectionate feeling, unaffectedly 
expressed, that we all like in spite of our dislike to 
that sort of thing. 

Early in 1843 Miss Edgeworth was taken 
seriously ill with bilious fever, from the effects 
of which she recovered but slowly. In late 
autumn she once more went to London 



JN LONDON. 2gi 

to pass the winter with her sister. It was 
to be her last visit. She enjoyed it with 
all the freshness of youth, sight-seeing and 
visiting without fatigue, even attending an 
opening of Parliament, which she protested 
had not tired her more than if she had been 
eighteen. Her prayer and hope was, as it had 
been her father's, that her body might not 
survive her mind, and that she might leave a 
tender and not unpleasing recollection of her- 
self in the hearts of her friends. Her letters 
certainly showed no falling-off in power, as is 
amply proved by one written during this visit 
to her Boston friends : — 

London, i North Audley street, ) 

Grosvenor square, January i, 1844. ^ 

My dear Friends Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor : 

I cannot begin this new year better, or more to my 
own heartfelt satisfaction, than by greeting you with my 
best wishes for many, many happy years to you of your 
domestic felicity and public estimation — estwtation 
superior to celebrity, you know, Mr. Ticknor, disdaining 
notoriety^ which all low minds run after and all high 
minds despise. How I see this every day in this 
London world, and hear it from all other worlds — 
loudly from your New World across the great Atlantic, 
where those who make their boast of independence and 
equality are struggling and quarreling for petty pre- 
eminence and '• vile trash." 

I have been here with my sister, Mrs. Wilson, in a 
peaceful, happy home these six weeks, and the rattle of 



292 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

Grosvenor square, at the corner of which her house is, 
never disturbs the quiet of her little hbrary, which is at 
the back of the house, and looks out upon gardens and 
trees (such as they are !).... 

Among the pleasantest days I have enjoyed in London 
society, among friends of old standing and acquaintance 
of distinguished talents, I spent two days at my very 
good old friend Dr. Holland's, where I heard your name 
and your letter to your countrymen on Sydney Smith's 
memorial spoken of in the highest terms of just estima- 
tion ! You know that Dr. Holland is married to Sydney 
Smith's daughter. I hope you know Dr. Holland's 
book, Medical Notes ^ which, though the title might 
seem exclusively professional, is full of such general 
and profound views of the human mind as well as body, 
that it could not but be interesting to you, and would 
prove to you for my present purpose that he is a person 
whose estimation and whose praise is worthy of 
you. ... 

I do not know whether you made acquaintance, when 
you were in London, with Sydney Smith's brother, Mr. 
Robert S., or, as he is strangely cognomened (or nick- 
named) Bobus Smith. He is well known as one of the 
celebrities of Holland House, where he has been figuring 
this half-century. But he no longer figures as a diner- 
out, and indeed, I believe from that notoriety he always 
seceded. He is now old and blind, but nevertheless has 
a most intelligent, energetic countenance, and I should 
almost say penetrating eye. When he turns and seems 
to look at me, I feel as if he looked into my face, and 
am glad so to feel, as he encourages me to open my 
mind to him by opening his own at once to me. I saw 
him for the first time a few evenings ago at Dr. 
Holland's, and sat between him and your American 
ambassador, Mr. Everett. I was much pleased by their 



IN LONDON. 293 

manner towards each other, and by all they said of the 
letter of which I spoke. Mr. R. Smith has, in the 
opinion of all who know him and his brother, the 
strongest and highest and deepest powers of the two; 
not so much wit, but a more sound, logical understand- 
ing — superior might in the reasoning faculty. If the 
two brothers' hands grasped and grappled for mastery, 
with elbows set down upon the table, in the fashion in 
which schoolboys and others try strength, Robert 
Smith's hand would be uppermost, and Sydney must 
give way, laughing perhaps, and pretending that he only 
gave way to fight another day. But independently of 
victory or trials of strength, the earnestness for truth 
of the blind brother would decide my interest and 
sympathy in his favor. 

Mr. Everett and Mr. R. Smith seemed to me properly 
to esteem each other, and to speak with perfect courtesy 
and discretion upon the most delicate national questions, 
on which, in truth, they liberally agreed more than could 
have been or was expected by the bystanders of different 
parties. Oh, Party Spirit ! Party Spirit ! how many fol- 
lies, how many outrages are committed in thy name, even 
in common conversation 1 

Mr. Everett did me the honor to come to visit us a few 
mornings after I had first met him at Dr. Holland's, and 
sat a good hour conversing as if we had been long known 
to each other. It is to me the most gratifying proof of 
esteem to be thus let at once into the real mind, the 
sanctum sanctorum^ instead of being kept with ceremo- 
nials and compliments on the steps, in the ante-chamber, 
or even in the salle de reception^ doing Kotoo Chinese or 
any other fashion. 

We went over vast fields of thought in our short hour, 
from America to France, and to England and to Ireland, 
Washington, Lafayette, Bonaparte, O'Connell. You may 



1>.' 



T^ 



294 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

guess it could only be a vue d'oiseau, flying too, but still 
a pounce down upon a true point now and then, and 
agreeing in our general unchangeable view that moral 
excellence is essential to make the man really great; 
that the highest intellectual superiority that can be given 
by Omnipotence to mortal ought not and does not, even 
in human opinion, entitle him without moral worth to the 
character of great. Mr. Everett tells me that Washing- 
ton Irving is going to publish another life of Washington. 
I fear his workmanship will be too fine and delicate for 
the main matter. Boldness, boldness, boldness — and 
brevity. Oh, the strength of brevity! Brevity keeps 
fast hold of the memory, and more fast hold of the judg- 
ment ; the whole process, en petit compris^ goes in a few 
words with the verdict to " long posterity ^^'' while elegance 
only charms the taste, accords with the present fashion 
of literature, and passes aw^ay, gliding gracefully into 
" mere oblivion." 

Lecture upon brevity well exemplified by present 
correspondent. 

A severe attack of erysipelas laid her low 
this summer; but if it weakened her body it 
did not depress her mental faculties. She 
writes to her cousin with all the buoyancy of 
youth : — 

I am right glad to look forward to the hope of seeing 
you again, and talking all manner of nonsense and sense, 
and laughing myself and making you laugh, as I used to 
do, though I am six years beyond the allotted age and 
have had so many attacks of illness within the last two 
years ; but I am, as Bess Fitzherbert and poor dear 
Sophy used to say, like one of those pith puppets that 



CURRENT LITERATURE. 295 

you knock down in vain ; they always start up the same 
as ever. . . . Sir Henry Marsh managed me with 
skill, and let me recover slowly, as nature requires at 
advanced age. I am obliged to repeat myself, " advanced 
age,'' because really and truly neither my spirits nor my 
powers of locomotion and facility of running up and 
down stairs would put me in mind of it. I do not find 
either my love for my friends or my love of literature in 
the least failing. I enjoyed, even when flattest in my 
bed, hearing Harriet Butler reading to me till eleven 
o'clock at night. 

Her interest in the current literature was 
sustained ; and though she had little sympathy 
with the romantic school of poetry and fiction 
that had arisen, her criticisms were both fair 
and acute. Of the modern French writers she 
said : — 

All the fashionable French novelists will soon be 
reduced to advertising for a new vice^ instead of, like the 
Roman Emperor, simply for a new pleasure. It seems 
to me with the Parisian novelists a first principle now 
that there is no pleasure without vice, and no vice with- 
out pleasure, but that the Old World vices having been 
exhausted, they must strain their genius to invent new; 
and so they do, in the most wonderful and approved bad 
manner, if I may judge from the few specimens I have 
looked at. 

Hejtrietta Temple she condemns as "trash/* 
*' morally proving that who does wrong should 
be rewarded with love and fortune.'' Indeed, 
so eager was she over books, so ardently did 



-^- 



296 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

she still enter into all adventures and details, 
that when she was ill her doctor found it need- 
ful to prescribe that her reading must be con- 
fined to some old, well-known work, or else 
something that should entertain and interest 
her without over-exciting her or straining her 
attention. 

During the whole of 1 846 the long illness 
and death of her brother Francis absorbed all 
Miss Edgeworth's interest. Next year came 
the terrible potato famine. She strained every 
nerve to help the sufferers ; her time, her 
thoughts, her purse, her whole strength, were 
devoted to the poor. She could hardly feel or 
think on any other theme ; plans to relieve the 
distress, petitions for aid, filled her letters. 
She even turned her attention once more to 
writing, in order to get more money for her 
starving countrymen. The result was Orlan- 
dino, a tale for children, relating the fortunes 
and reformation of a graceless truant. It was 
the last work she published — her literary career 
thus ending, as it began, with a tale to give 
gladness to childhood. She had her reward in 
a great pleasure that came to her from America. 
The children of Boston, hearing what pains 
their kind friend in Ireland was taking for her 
unhappy compatriots, as a recognition of their 
love for her and her writings, organized a sub- 



IRELAND. 2()7 

scription. At the end of a few weeks they 
were able to send her one hundred and fifty bar- 
rels of flour and rice. They came with the 
simple address, worth more to her than many 
phrases: '*To Miss Edgeworth, for her poor/' 

She was deeply touched and grateful. It 
touched her also that the porters, who carried 
the grain down to the shore, refused to be paid ; 
and with her own hands she knitted a woolen 
comforter for each man and sent them to a 
friend for distribution. Before they reached 
their destination the hands that had worked 
them were cold, and the beating of that warm, 
kind heart stilled forever. 

For scarcely was. the famine over, and before 
Miss Edgeworth's over-taxed strength had time 
to recoup, another and yet heavier blow was to 
befall her. Indeed, many deaths and sorrows 
as she had known, in some respects this was 
the severest that had for some years come upon 
her. It was natural to see the old go before her, 
but not so the young, and when in 1848 her 
favorite sister Fanny died rather suddenly. Miss 
Edgeworth felt that the dearest living object of 
her love had gone. 

The shock did not apparently tell on her 
health, as she continued to employ herself with 
her usual interest and sympathy in all the weal 
and woe of her family and many friends, but the 



298 MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

life-spring had snapped, unknown perhaps even 
to her, certainly unknown to those around her. 
For she bore up bravely, cheerfully, and was to 
all appearances as bright as ever. Next to 
doing good, reading was still her greatest pleas- 
ure : — 

Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with 
age. Last ist of January was my eighty-second birthday, 
and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as 
ever I had in my hfe. 

History gave her particular delight : — 

I am surprised to find how much more history interests 
me now than when I was young, and how much more I 
am now interested in the same events recorded, and their 
causes and consequences shown, in this history of the 
French Revolution, and in all the history of Europe dur- 
ing the last quarter of a century, than I was when the 
news came fresh and fresh in the newspapers. I do not 
think I had sense enough to take in the relations and pro- 
portions of the events. It was like moving a magnifying 
glass over the parts of a beetle, and not taking in the 
whole. 

Macaulay's history charmed her, and in all 
her first enthusiasm she wrote a long letter 
about it to her old friend. Sir Henry Holland. 
He showed it to Macaulay, who was so struck 
with its discrimination and ability that he 
begged to be allowed to keep it. Among all 
the incidents connected with the publication of 



MA CAUL AY'S HISTORY, 299 

his book, nothing, it is said, pleased Macaulay 
more than the gratification he had contrived to 
give Miss Edgeworth as a small return for the 
enjoyment which, during more than forty years, 
he had derived from her writings : — 

Trim, April 2nd, 1849. 
My dear Dr. Holland : 

I have just finished Macaulay's two volumes of the 
History of England ^ith. the same feeling that you ex- 
pressed— regret at coming to the end, and longing for 
another volume — the most uncommon feeling, I sup- 
pose, that readers of two thick octavo volumes of the 
history of England and of times so well known, or whose 
story has been so often written, ever experienced. In 
truth, in the whole course of reading or hearing it read I 
was sorry to stop and glad to go on. It bears pecuharly 
well that severe test of being read aloud; it never wearies 
the ear by the long resounding line, but keeps the at- 
tention alive by the energy shown. It is the perfection 
of style so varied, and yet the same in fitness, in pro- 
priety, in perspicuity, in grace, in dignity and eloquence, 
and, whenever naturally called forth, in that just indigna- 
tion which makes the historian as well as the poet. If 
Voltaire says true that " the style is the man," what a 
man must Macaulay be ! But the man is in fact as much 
more than the style, as the matter is more than the man- 
ner. It is astonishing with what ease Macaulay wields, 
manages, arranges his vast materials collected far and 
near, and knows their value and proportions so as to give 
the utmost strength and force and light and life to the 
whole, and sustains the whole. Such new lights are 
thrown upon historic facts and historic characters that 
the old appear new, and that which had been dull be- 






300 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

comes bright and entertaining and interesting. Exceed- 
ingly interesting he has made history by the happy use 
and aid of biography and anecdote. A word brings the 
individual before us, and shows not only his character, 
but the character of the times, and at once illustrates or 
condemns to everlasting fame. Macaulay has proved by 
example how false Madame de Stael's principle was that 
biography and biographical anecdotes were altogether 
inadnaissible in history — below the dignity or breaking 
the proportion or unity, I suppose she thought. But 
whatever might be her reasons, she gave this opinion to 
Dumont, who told it to me. Much good it did her! 
How much m.ore interesting historical precis in painting 
or in writing, which is painting in word, are made by the 
introduction of portraits of celebrated individuals ! Either 
as actors or even as spectators, the bold figures live, and 
merely by their life further the action and impress the 
sense of truth and reality. I have pleasure, my dear Dn 
Holland, in pointing out to you, warm as it first comes, 
the admiration which this work has raised to this height 
in my mind. I know this will give you sympathetic 
pleasure. 

And now, my good friend, in return I require from you 
prompt and entire belief in an assertion which I am about 
to make, which may appear to you at first incredible. But 
try-try; at all events the effort will give you occasion to 
determine a question which perhaps, excellent metaphy- 
sician as you have shown yourself, you never settled 
whether you can or cannot believe at will. 

That which I require you to believe is ^^^ that all the 
admiration I have expressed of Macaulay's work is quite 
uninfluenced by the self-satisfaction, vanity, pride, sur- 
prise, delight, I had in finding my own name in a note ! ! ! ! ! 

Be assured, believe it or not as you may or can, that nei- 
ther my vanity nor my gratitude weighed with my judg- 



LAST LETTERS, 301 

ment in the slightest degree in the opinion I formed, or in 
that warmth with which it was poured out. In fact, 
I had formed my opinion, and expressed it with 
no less warmth to my friends round me, reading 
the book to me, before I came to that note; more- 
over, there was a mixture of shame and twinge of 
pain with the pleasure, the pride I felt in having 
a line in his immortal history given to me^ when the 
historian makes no mention of Sir Walter Scott through- 
out the work, even in places where it seems impossible 
that genius could resist paying the becoming tribute which 
genius owes and loves to pay to genius. I cannot con- 
ceive how this could be. I cannot bring myself to imag- 
ine that the words Tory or Whig, or Dissenter or 
Churchman, or feeling of party or natural spirit, could 
bias such a man as Macaulay. Perhaps he reserves him- 
self for the forty-five, and I hope in heaven it is so, and 
that you will tell me I am very impetuous and prema- 
turely impertinent. Meanwhile, be so good to make my 
grateful and deeply-felt thanks to the great author for the 
honor which he has done me. When I was in London 
some years ago, and when I had the pleasure of meeting 
Mr. Macaulay, I took the liberty of expressing a wish 
that he would visit Ireland, and that if he did we might 
have the honor of seeing him at our house. I am very 
glad to find that the Battle of the Boyne will bring him 
here. He must have now so many invitations from those 
who have the highest inducement to offer, that I hardly 
dare to repeat my request. But will you, my dear friends, 
do whatever you can with propriety for us, and say how 
much Mrs. Edgeworth and myself and our whole family 
would be gratified by his giving us even a call on his 
way to some better place, and even an hour of his con- 
versation. I am now at Trim with my sister and dear 
brother. Trim and its ruins, and the tower, and where 



N 

i/' 



302 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

kings and generals and poets have been, would perhaps, 
he may think, be worth his seeing. Dean Butler and my 
sister feel as I do how many claims Mr. Macaulay must 
have upon his time in his visit to Ireland; but they 
desire me to say that if anything should bring him into 
this neighborhood, they should think themselves highly 
honored by receiving him. I am sure he would be inter- 
ested by Mr. Butler's conversation and remarks on vari- 
ous parts of Macaulay's history, and /should exceedingly 
like to hear it commented and discussed. Little / must 
come in, you see, at every close. You will observe that, 
in speaking of Macaulay's work, I have spoken only of 
the style, the only point of which I could presume to 
think my opinion could be of any value. Of the great 
attributes, of the essential qualities of the historian, 
accuracy, fidelity, impartiality, I could not, even if I 
thought myself qualified to judge, attempt to speak in 
this letter. 

But I am sensible that I have neither the knowledge 
nor the strength, much less the coolness of judgment, 
necessary to make opinion valuable on such subjects. 
I could easily give my own opinion, but — of no use. 
The less I am inclined to speak when I do not know, the 
more I am anxious to hear ; and most delightful and 
profitable would it be to me to hear the great historian 
himself speak on many points which I hear discussed by 
my learned brother. Dean Butler, and others (on Claren- 
don's character, etc., etc., etc.) We have not yet seen 
any of the public reviews of Macaulay's history. No 
doubt the stinging, little, ephemeral insects will come 
out in swarms to buzz and fly-blow in the sunshine. The 
warmer, the brighter, the thicker the swarm will be to 
prick. I hope you will read this unconscionable lengthy 
letter when you are in your carriage, rolling about from 
patient to patient, and be patient yourself then, my dear 



LAST LETTERS, 303 

doctor. You are always so very good and kind to me 
that I encroach. I seldom write such long epistles. As 
the most impudent beggar-woman in our town says to 
Mrs. E., " Ma'am, your ladyship, I never beg from any 
one so much as your ladyship; troth, never from any but 
you." . . . ' 

Give my most kind and affectionate remembrances to 
Mrs. Holland and your daughters and sons, and 

Believe me most garrulously and sincerely yours, 

Maria Edgeworth. 

This letter, so characteristic in its humiUty 
and generous admiration, shows no sign of old 
age or impaired faculties, neither is there any 
trace of this in one of the last she ever wrote, 
addressed to her sister Harriet : — 

I am heartily obliged and delighted by your being such 
a goose and Richard such a gander, as to be frightened 
out of your wits at my going up the ladder to take off the 
top of the clock ! Know, then, that I am quite worthy 
of that most unmerited definition of man, " A creature 
that looks before and after." Before I let on to anybody 
my doubts of my own capability of reaching the nail on 
which to hang the top, I called Shaw, and made her 
stand at the foot of the ladder while I went up, and 
found I could no more reach the nail than I could reach 
the moon. Exit Shaw ! 

Prudence of M. E., Act 2 : Summoned Cassidy, and 
informed him that I was to wind up the clock, and that 
he was promoted to take off the top for me ; and then up 
I went and wound the clock, and wound it as I had done 
before you was born, as there is nothing easier, only to 
see that it is not going to 7naintain at the very instant. 



>> 



304 MARIA EDGEWORTH, 

which is plainly to be noted by the position of the main- 
taining pin on the little outer wheel relative to the first 
deep tooth. You see I am not quite a nincompoop. I 
send my lines : — 

" Ireland, with all thy faults, thy follies too, 
I love thee still : still with a candid eye must view 
Thy wit too quick, still blundering into sense ; 
Thy reckless humor ; sad improvidence ; 
And even what sober judges follies call — 
I, looking at the heart, forget them all." 

Maria E., May, 1849. 

Miss Edgeworth had been staying with Mr. 
and Mrs. Butler in the spring. When taking 
leave she was unusually agitated and depressed, 
but said as she went away: *'At Whitsuntide 
I shall return.'' On the very day before she 
was to redeem this promise, she drove out in 
apparent good health, when a sudden feeling 
of weakness overcame her and made her return 
to the house. Severe pains in the region of 
the heart set in, and after a few hours' illness 
Maria Edgeworth died — died as she had fondly 
wished, at home, in the arms of her stepmother. 
Yet another of her wishes was granted : she 
had spared her friends the anguish of seeing 
her suffer from protracted illness. May 22d, 
1849, she rose from the banquet of life, where, 
in her own words, she had been a happy guest. 

In her latter years Miss Edgeworth had been 



THE END. 305 

asked to furnish prefaces of a biographical 
character to her novels. She refused, saying 
she had nothing personal to tell. "As a 
woman, my life, wholly domestic, cannot afford 
anything interesting to the public; I am like 
the ^ needy knife-grinder ' — I have no story to 
tell." 

Was she right.? or is not the story of so 
loving and lovable a life worth telling ? 



r ^ 



708 




. V , S * * 7 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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